


The Way Home

by Ocianne



Series: Promenade & The Way Home [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Gen, Magical Kaito, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 88,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocianne/pseuds/Ocianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a tumble through freefall, home has never sounded better. Unfortunately for Kaito and Saguru, they don't quite make where they were aiming for... it's going to be a long trip back. Sequel to Promenade, minor continuing crossover with the Kingdom Hearts series and Yu-Gi-Oh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through the Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> This sequel picks up immediately where Promenade left off and makes all manner of back references. Additionally, in one chapter later on a mentally unstable character has suicidal ideation; please read with caution if this is a trigger.

_We shall not cease from exploration_  
 _And the end of all our exploring_  
 _Will be to arrive where we started_  
 _And know the place for the first time._  
\- Little Gidding (V.27-30)

* * *

They were falling, gaining speed with every second, headed for the unforgiving white ground below. Desperately, Kaito reached and - _pulled-_.

_Not here-Somewhere real-Safe landing-HOME!_

The rip opened beneath them, and they fell through.

Immediately after, the sickening sensation of freefall broke from impact with the surface of eye-stingingly chlorinated water. Pressure exploded against Kaito's eardrums as they plunged downwards, velocity slowing from breakneck speed to simply Too Damn Fast by the time they collided with the concrete bottom of the swimming pool's deep end. Hakuba landed on top of him, a shoulder driving into his sternum and painfully forcing air out of Kaito's lungs in a rush of bubbles.

Somewhere in there, Kaito's grip on the Shadows had been lost, closing the rip behind them, because Hakuba had the regained presence of mind to grab Kaito by the shirt and haul him upwards. Kaito concentrated on not choking or inhaling more water than he already had until they broke the surface together, Hakuba gasping and Kaito immediately gagging and coughing up water and what felt like half a lung. Hakuba quickly steered him to the pool's side, where he clung to the tiled edge until his chest stopped spasming and he could mostly breathe again.

The blond re-submerged a few times, coming back up with their bags, his staff, and Kaito's card gun before he hoisted himself out of the pool a few feet away and moved to offer Kaito a soaked, gloved hand.

"Hopefully, they'll be able to clean the pool before anyone else tries to swim in it."

"Nngh," Kaito replied eloquently. He took the hand, using Hakuba's leverage and his other arm to haul himself onto dry land, and then felt justified in collapsing bonelessly against the ground for a bit.

"I am sorry," Hakuba murmured, sitting back next to Kaito and glancing around, sounding much improved from when their involuntary freefall had begun. "I didn't expect… that. I'm impressed, though… you managed to drop us in the diving half of the school swimming pool."

"'S safe," Kaito rasped hoarsely. "What I was aiming for. Safe 'n' home."

_Not feeling like a drowned rat would have been nice, though._

"Well, that explains Ekoda High. It worked, since we evidently hadn't fallen far enough for surface tension to be problematic. I can think of little else that would have."

Kaito rolled over onto his back, coughed, and breathed as deeply as he could. "Yeah."

Hakuba eyed him critically. "You look in need of several hours sleep, minimum, before even thinking of catching up with Riku-kun and the others. When you feel up to moving, we can get you back to your house."

"I hear that. A change of clothes, some sleep…"

"Mmm. Shall I find you in the morning?"

At the shade of reluctance in Hakuba's voice, Kaito took a moment to consider, and then offered, "You could stay the night, if you want."

Hakuba wouldn't have to deal with reappearing and then disappearing in quick succession back home, and there'd be less travel time all around. Not to mention that Kaito no longer had to worry about the detective figuring out the existence and location of Kid's secret room if given opportunity to walk his puzzle-box of a house and see where the walls didn't fit together snugly. A similar train of thought had to be apparent to Hakuba, but he still sounded a bit surprised when he replied:

"Oh. That would be convenient, yes. Thank you."

Kaito smiled wryly. "No problem. Okay, trying to stand on three." He took a deep breath. "One… two…"

_This is probably gonna hurt…_

"Two and a half… two and three quarters…"

Hakuba got a hand beneath Kaito's arm. "Three." They stood together, Hakuba making sure Kaito could stand steady. "All right?"

"Yeah… Yeah, it's okay." He didn't feel perfect, but he felt capable of mobility. "Thanks."

"I prefer you in one piece," Hakuba replied with a slight smile.

"What a coincidence, I do too." Kaito grinned.

"It's a preferable manner of existence. Let's go…" As they headed out through the school grounds, Hakuba sighed and added, "We'll need to dry out our cell phones and anything else electronic that isn't already ruined."

"Hell, yeah… and my card gun is gonna need maintenance. Hopefully my card cases are watertight, though." Kaito wiggled his toes inside his sneakers, making a face. "Also, we're squelching. I hate that."

Hakuba chuckled, hefting his staff upwards a little. "I'll take squelching over dead. Your house isn't very far from school, is it?"

"Nah, not really."

"Good." The blond peeled off one of his gloves and ran a hand through his wet, thoroughly disarrayed hair. "I'd hate to have to walk very far looking slightly crazy."

Kaito snickered. "You get used to it."

"…No, I don't think I ever really have, despite your many and varied attempts to acclimatize me to the prospect."

"Come on, you with red and green hair at December's end of term ceremony was _fun…"_

The banter continued sporadically as they squished home, clothes slowly drying out in the late afternoon sun. At the house, Kaito automatically tried the door while fishing in his bag for the key, and to his surprise, it opened.

"That's weird… Mom should be working right now, all this week." Brow furrowed, Kaito slipped inside, toeing off his shoes as Hakuba followed and closed the door behind them. "Mom?"

_Déjà vu, even without picking the lock this time._

No one answered, but after a moment's silence, footsteps pounded from Kaito's room upstairs, along the hallway and down the stairway… at which point Kaito found himself pointing his (useless) cardgun at his mirror image—dark hair mussed and lightly gelled, and blue eyes huge as he stared at them like they were a nightmare come to life.

_What. The. HELL?_

" _Kudou-kun?"_ Kaito demanded, eyes narrowing.

His double's mouth opened and closed a few times, breathing quickly picking up speed, but no sound came out in answer until half-hysterical laughter suddenly bubbling up amidst the hyperventilation, and Kudou's knees gave out. He collapsed onto the bottom stair, forehead dropping into his hands, shaking as if about to fly apart.

Something was very, _very_ wrong here.

Kaito holstered the cardgun with a curse as he closed the distance between them, kneeling in front of Kudou and grasping him by the shoulders.

"Kudou-kun. Talk to me. Why are you here, and what's with the hair?"

_I'll save how you know who I_ _**am** _ _, let alone my address, for later._

Kudou's fingers clenched in his hair, breathing gradually slowing but still unsteady as he trembled in Kaito's grip. "Already gave it all to you once, bastard… Here t' take it all again?"

"What? No!" Whatever Kudou was asking, No.

"How long've you remembered?" Kudou looked up, dark eyes the window to some undefined wound, before shifting his gaze to give Hakuba a horribly bittersweet smile. "How long've you known?"

"Kudou-kun…" Kaito's voice brought Kudou's gaze back to meet his. "I swear to you, we have _no_ idea what's going on."

A ragged chuckle. "If you're here, you have to know… Have to remember."

"Kuroba-kun?" Hakuba's voice was thoughtful, with a dawning tinge of horror. "You said you were aiming for home. If the Shadows are everywhere, is it possible that there could be more than one place matching that criteria?"

"Like… alternate realities?"

Kaito's blood ran cold.

_Like the otherwhere of my nightmares?_

Méraud's voice broke into the back of his mind, murmuring, _:It's… possible. It would not be inconceivable to become lost in space as opposed to lost in time.:_

_Oh, Kami, no…_

_Not thinking about that right now, or I'm going to be sick._

Kaito refocused on the here and now, where Kudou was looking between them in total bewilderment. "Confirming question time: I last saw you less than a week ago in your usual habitat, and you still had your little problem. How long have you been… staying here?"

Kudou's eyes unfocused briefly. "Six… No, seven months." He chuckled again, and the undertones of emotion were seriously starting to creep Kaito out. So many of them, none of them good… "Feels like so much longer. Maybe I just finally snapped..."

_Argh—You can't argue someone out of thinking they're hallucinating._

Kaito pulled a hand back and smacked Kudou across the face, hard. "Hallucinations don't usually hurt, Kudou-kun. We're real."

_Though I desperately wish this_ _**weren't** _ _._

Thankfully, Kudou seemed shocked into regaining his composure, a hand covering his cheek as he gave Hakuba's staff a slightly askance look. "I... I don't remember ever seeing Hakuba with a staff. If you're real, and not Hakuba and Kuroba playing some kind of sick joke... How are you _here_?"

Kaito smiled wryly. "Short version? I have sparkly magic powers, not just sleight of hand. It lets us travel between places, but it looks like my aim got messed up this time when I was trying to get us home."

Kudou switched to giving him the sideways look. "...I can't believe I'm actually taking you seriously."

"We're not the people you know, and you're sure as heck not the Kudou Shinichi we know. It's a logical conclusion, if you think that kind of thing is possible. Which we do. I'd demonstrate why, but I'm currently running on empty. Look, Kudou-kun... What happened? Why are you here?"

Kudou covered his eyes with a hand, briefly silent. "I need coffee for this."

Kaito levered himself to his feet and offered Kudou a hand up. "Hakuba-kun and I got soaked on the way here. If you don't mind us borrowing some of your clothes for the evening, you can make coffee while we get changed."

Kudou took the hand and stood, face still pale and drawn. "Okay... Sure."

He headed off to the kitchen, and Kaito turned to Hakuba. "Go ahead up and find a shirt you'll be willing to wear. I'll be up in a second with pants that should fit you."

Hakuba raised an eyebrow. "Willing to wear?"

Kaito grinned. "You've rarely seen me outside of school uniform."

"This is true..." Hakuba shook his head and went up the stairs, leaving Kaito to detour to the den, where Touichi's portrait stood.

"I'm home, Oyaji," he murmured in customary greeting. "...Sort of."

Pushing lightly against the frame with a hand, he met no resistance to indicate the presence of the security system he'd set up months ago, after his first encounter with Snake. The portrait moved without protest, and he stepped inside.

And sneezed, twice.

The setup of the room was nearly identical to Kaito's memories, but there was dust _everywhere_... far more than six months of neglect worth. Kaito hurried to grab a pair of pants that would fit Hakuba, and nearly ran back out to escape the feeling that he was walking through Kid's tomb.

The portrait flipped on its axis a few times behind him, finally settling closed on Touichi's magician portrait. Kaito tightened his grip on the pants and took the stairs two at a time, very deliberately _not_ letting his mind contemplate what, exactly, had happened in this twisted version of Tokyo.

Hakuba looked up at Kaito's entrance to the bedroom, concern flickering across his face. "...Are you all right?"

"My lungs aren't happy with me. I'll be okay." Kaito held out the pair of pants, his heavy breathing from rushing upstairs quickly diminishing. "Here."

Taking them, Hakuba gave him a mildly skeptical look. "You look more as if you've seen a ghost than irritated your lungs further."

Kaito turned to his closet, pulling out a black T-shirt that cheerfully declared in white letters: _The voices may not be real, but they sure have some great ideas!_

"… No one's been inside the room for a year... maybe longer. You can change in here. I'll use the bathroom." He grabbed the rest of a set of clothes and retreated before Hakuba could comment further.

When he emerged, dry-clad, Hakuba was waiting with his damp clothes and bag in a bundle, wearing one of Kaito's few solid-color shirts. "Could I trouble you for a comb?" the blond asked mildly, seemingly willing to let Kaito's behavior slide in the circumstances.

"Yeah, there's one in the medicine cabinet. I'll throw our clothes in the dryer and meet you down there."

Hakuba nodded, and Kaito headed downstairs, finger-combing his hair as he took care of the clothes and spread out their other things on a towel to dry, including taking the three minutes necessary to break down his cardgun into its component parts. The habits of a magician were too hard to break: You _always_ kept your equipment in working order, no matter what. Always.

When he got to the kitchen, Kudou took one look at the T-shirt and smiled crookedly. "Aoko has rolled her eyes every time I wear that shirt. I've never been able to justify asking why."

Kaito couldn't help but grin. "Let's just say the harmonica, two decks of playing cards, and chicken were blamed on The Voices."

Kudou _erk_ 'd faintly. "I am never wearing that shirt again."

"What about the shirt?" Hakuba inquired quietly, stepping into the kitchen doorway with hair, if still damp, perfectly arranged once more.

"You don't want to know," Kudou replied, turning back to the coffee as it finished brewing and pouring a large mug of what look like steaming ink.

Hakuba glanced at Kaito, eyebrow raised, but only needed a glimpse of Kaito's grin to reply, "You're right. I don't. Is there enough coffee for a second serving?"

"Sure, if you don't mind it strong…" Kudou gestured to the cabinet that held the coffee mugs.

"That's fine. Despite exhaustion, I'd rather not sleep for a while."

Kaito winced internally as the blond poured himself a mug.

_Overwhelming hunger swamping your mind definitely counts as Nightmare Fuel Unleaded. Sleep is going to be so much fun tonight…_

"If there's enough, can you make that three? I'm good with half-full." As Hakuba shrugged and did so, Kaito headed for the fridge, snagging a carton and then proceeding to cut the coffee with an equal amount of milk.

"How can you adulterate coffee like that?" Kudou asked, horror only slightly sarcastic.

"I've heard stories at the police station about your coffee, Kudou-kun. I like to keep my stomach lining intact."

"Not to mention, Kuroba-kun on a caffeine high is one of several images I'd like to keep firmly out of the real world," Hakuba added with a tiny smirk.

Kaito grinned, only a little evilly. "Just be glad you've never seen me on a chocolate rush."

"...I don't even want to imagine."

"You can wait until you see the real thing." Kaito drifted to the dining table, gravity of the situation creeping back in without the banter to shield against it. "Okay, Kudou-kun… sit down and tell us the story."

Kudou sat at the other end, knuckles white around his mug as he stared down into the coffee. "I don't know how things happened for you…" He glanced up. "…How much did you know about my situation?"

Kaito refrained from glancing at Hakuba. This was going to be... interesting.

"Not long after we faced off over the Clock Tower, you encountered something—spell, drug, I don't know—that reversed ten year's worth of growth, and you've been hiding at the Mouri Detective Agency ever since, trying to find a cure and a way to catch the ones who did it."

_And chasing me because you can, and I'm a puzzle where no one dies._

"Wha—Edogawa Conan is _you_?" Hakuba blurted, staring at Kudou.

"…Was." Kudou smiled bitterly. "My personal nightmare."

"…Well." Hakuba sounded thoughtful, processing quickly as _many_ oddities about Conan suddenly slotted into place. "That certainly explains the contradictory behavior, and why you tried to break down a bloody _door_ when we crossed paths at the competition last month."

_Wait, what? Competition? I didn't hear about this!_

As Kaito turned to Hakuba, distracted, Kudou blinked. "Month? That was… The detective competition happened over a year ago."

Kaito abruptly swallowed, curiosity thoroughly quashed as he refrained from mental panic through sheer force of will. "Kudou-kun? How old are you?"

The bitter smile stayed in place around a swallow of steaming coffee. "Nineteen. My birthday was a few weeks ago."

_Almost a_ _**year** _ _…_

Kaito forced himself to breathe through the tightness in his chest.

_We can get back. I just need to add a date parameter as well as a sufficiently detailed definition of 'Home' next time._

"Many happy returns," Hakuba murmured, returning Kaito's focus to the more pressing issue.

"Yeah," he agreed. "And it looks like you've lived a year we haven't."

"But I'm still little, there…" Kudou said absently, almost to himself. "I guess I got a lucky break in my investigations that the Conan you know missed. The Syndicate broke in January of our junior year, nine months after APTX4869 shrunk me. I still didn't have the cure, then..."

The smile turned melancholy. "Three weeks later, Kid impersonated me at the heist, got himself _shot_ , and ended up in the hospital with a head graze as Shinichi."

"And you mentioned remembering, earlier," Kaito replied, an uneasy feeling blossoming in his stomach. "Amnesia?"

A nod, eyes shuttered. "Total retrograde. I don't know why for sure, and the docs couldn't figure it out either, though one speculated about _something_ else having happened that night, and he buried it so deep everything went with it."

Around the coffee mug, Kudou's hands were white again. "I found out later that Inspector Nakamori thought the sniper was the assassin-for-hire, Snake, who'd managed to escape capture during the Syndicate bust." He turned his head away. "…Snake's body turned up a day or two later in an alleyway near the heist site, injuries consistent with having fallen from the roof."

Kaito froze.

… _.No. You did not just say that. Not with those implications._

He fought down a wave of nausea and took a drink of his coffee, oddly grateful when Hakuba's hand found his shoulder and tightened in silent support.

"Snake's the bastard who killed Dad," he whispered hoarsely. "He always thought I was still him, and was looking to finish the job."

_But I don't want him dead because of_ _**me** _ _…_

Kudou still wasn't looking at him. "I checked the roof, after I heard, but there wasn't much evidence. I know it was an accident, Kid would never take what he can't give back… but on top of the head wound… he wasn't Kuroba when he woke back up."

"…So you didn't say anything?" Being Conan had changed Kudou—he'd always been obsessed with justice, but not so much altruism, especially not when it came to his own life.

"I _couldn't_ say anything. If I'd outed him as Kid… Even with only a year's worth of outstanding warrants after his age was revealed, he'd have been on the fast track for the trial of the century, with no memories of what he'd done. And he wasn't even one of the bad guys. Without his memories, he couldn't even have tried to _run_. And I was still stuck as Conan for kami knows how long, while Ran was so happy after an age of hiding behind a brave face and waiting…" Kudou trailed off, closing his eyes.

Kaito sat, silent, trying to process it all.

After several long moments, Hakuba ventured, "You felt the pain associated with bringing the truth to light outweighed what could be gained from it."

Kudou made a noise that could have been agreement. "I spent a year putting her through crap she didn't deserve, trying to keep her safe without having to let go. … I didn't want to hurt her again."

"…You made the sacrifice for Kuroba-kun, as well," Hakuba responded. "Since he can't say it to you himself… Thank you."

Kudou looked up, clearly startled. Kaito felt it high time to actually become coherent again. "…You gave up a hell of a lot, for everyone associated with both of us. It couldn't have been easy."

"Once I made it here, it was easier… I wasn't stuck in a void. I tried to forget, to let myself become him…" Kudou shook his head, eyes haunted. "I was so close, until you came. I just… it's still not _mine._ "

_And that still hurts. He stole your life, unknowingly, and you're essentially stealing his, but_ _**he's** _ _the thief. You're not._

… _Something has to change._

"Kudou-kun…" Kaito leaned forward, catching the other teen's gaze. "Speaking as a Kaito? You don't have to play a role like an understudy waiting for the lead to recover. I gratefully accept what you've given me, and I give you my name, and this life here, as a token of my gratitude. Take it, and make it yours. He'd want you to, I promise."

"I… You're sure?"

_Dammit, Kudou-kun, you are Not Allowed to ever sound that fragile._

Kaito forced himself to smile gently, encouraging. "I'm positive. Take care of Mom, and make Aoko happy, whether as a friend or something more." He let the smile widen to a lightly teasing grin. "Better you than Hakuba-kun, if you're interested."

"Need I remind you that I'm sitting right here?" Hakuba questioned.

"Nope," Kaito smirked. "It's more fun this way."

To Kaito's satisfaction, the banter finally elicited a laugh from Kudou—not the horrible chuckles from before, but an honest laugh of real amusement, body language relaxing visibly as an old, constant tension finally drained away.

"And when you turn twenty," Kaito continued with a wicked grin, "Lemme tell you about my plans to paint Tokyo Tower pink…"

To Kaito's delight and Hakuba's mild horror, judging by the muttered, "Oh, Lord…", Kudou's response was a disturbingly matching grin. "If you want to stay for tonight, I'll gladly pick your brain."

"That'd be great. I _really_ need dinner and a decent night's sleep." Kaito smiled. "And maybe I can pick your brain in return for at least a copy of the antidote, to take home with me. It'd make a nice souvenir."

Kudou winced. "I… didn't keep a copy of any of that, after I left."

_...And re-establishing contact with whoever_ _**did** _ _set you up with the antidote is a profoundly bad idea at this point._

"Forget I asked. At least we know there's one to be found."

"Mmm." Suddenly, Kudou brightened, giving Kaito a smirk. "Did you find Pandora?"

Kaito's jaw dropped. "You _didn't_."

Kudou's smirk morphed into a full-blown grin, just a hint of smugness creeping in. "I did. Not as Kid, but once I knew what you were looking for… after I got the cure I looked as Shinichi until I found it, before coming here."

" _Kudou-kun_ ," Kaito growled. "If you don't tell me where you found it in the next five seconds, I swear I will sic a dragon on your ass."

_:I object to that. I am not a big stick.:_

_I have other dragons besides you._

Kudou was giving him another utterly bewildered look. "…What?"

"Part of the sparkly magic powers. Where was Pandora?"

"But… Dragons? I want to see this."

Kaito reached into his jeans, where he'd relocated his card cases after confirming that the contents had remained dry.

_I'm not using you as a big stick. Only a little one, at least if this works…_

Pulling out Méraud's card, he concentrated on thinking small and intoned, "Luster Dragon."

The Shadows swirled briefly on the table between them, blue and grey twilight draining the energy he'd picked up from the coffee, and faded to reveal Méraud crouching in foot-high miniature. She immediately twisted around, examining her glinting emerald scales. ":Why do you insist on continually _shrinking_ me, Kaito-kun?:"

Kudou, predictably, gaped.

"Kudou-kun, meet Méraud. She's from a sort of pocket reality, and decided she liked me enough to help me figure out what I could do. Méraud, Kudou Shinichi-kun. He's a smart-aleck detective with a gift for puzzles. Now tell me where Pandora was or I'll ask her to scorch your coffee."

Kudou clutched his coffee protectively. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Kudou gave Méraud a beseeching look. "I've never done anything to you…"

Méraud chuckled. ":Despite my newly gained humility, you're teasing my young Shadowmaster.:" She blew a small flame into the air, more showing off than making any real threat.

"Okay, okay…" Kudou relented with a little smile, looking back at Kaito. "Avoid any actual heist, if you can. Even you would be hard pressed going up against the Smithsonian's security with the Hope Diamond as the prize."

"The Hope…" Kaito slumped back, chuckling helplessly. "Oh, Kami, the _irony…_ "

":Irony?:"

Hakuba answered, "According to myth, hope was the only thing left in Pandora's box after the evils of the world escaped from it. Despite the name being only a few hundred years old, it makes a certain amount of sense. You said Pandora should glow red in the light of the moon, and blue diamonds glow red when exposed to a certain spectrum of UV light..."

"Glowed, and melted out almost onto my hand," Kudou confirmed. "Even though I was wearing gloves, I'm glad I didn't have to take my chances over whether a magically—" Kudou sounded so disgruntled, having to use the word without sarcasm— "liquefied rock could get through waterproof material."

Kaito shuddered. "I can imagine. If the rock itself were the tears…"

_More nightmare fodder I'd rather not think about._

"Yeah. Long story short, out of direct moonlight it solidified into a blood-red rock. I returned the Hope Diamond, destroyed Pandora, and went… home."

"Sounds like a good day's work, to me." Kaito leaned back, more than a little overwhelmed. "Hell. If it's really _there_ …"

"Then you can stop flirting with bullets at night like a damn idiot," Hakuba interjected smoothly.

"Only if I pretend to get hit by one, first," Kaito pointed out. "If They think Kid disappeared again because he found it and is still alive, Mom and I would theoretically make good leverage."

_Good thing I've been planning for worst-case scenarios that would require faking a death to stay alive since day one…_

Hakuba's lips thinned, but he couldn't discount the argument. "Let the record show that if you actually _do_ get hit by a bullet in the process, I will be _profoundly_ irritated with you."

A lopsided smile crept onto Kaito's face. "Understood."

":Is there something on my scales?": Méraud inquired suddenly. ":You're staring.:"

Kaito glanced over to see Kudou leaning forward towards Méraud, looking about two seconds from poking her with curiosity.

"Sorry," Kudou apologized. "I've never seen anything like you that wasn't a hologram."

":I assure you, I'm quite real.:" She turned to look at Kaito, draconic smile oddly fond. ":However, small as I am at the moment, I'm still only present through Kaito-kun's energy, of which he has very little to spare at the moment, and someone has to be the sensible one.:"

"Which is not Kuroba-kun in any way, shape, or form," Hakuba added.

"Hey!" Kaito protested, but was ignored.

":It was nice to meet you, Kudou-kun. Be well.:"

"…Thanks. You too."

She nodded, and Kaito let go of the summon, re-pocketing the card, then yawned. "Okay. How about we manage dinner, pick each other's brains over poker for a while, and then crash?"

Kudou grinned. "You're on."

The time passed enjoyably—even after the fun of cat-and-mouse with Kudou, Kaito had never really let himself entertain the idea of being able to spend an evening in Kudou's company with the masks off. Even if trying this at home was a profoundly bad idea, here and now… it was fun.

_Why are the closest thing that I have to friends, all detectives?_

:At a guess… Because they're the only ones you've let close enough to see you, masks and all.:

… _Oh. Right._

After a few hours, Kaito had wrung the tale of the detective competition out of the other two, to Hakuba's chagrin—the blond apologized to Kudou for being a prat towards Hattori even after the competition had turned into a real murder case, citing an admittedly poor coping mechanism for worry and, on his part at least, Kaito having been missing at that point for four weeks without a word to prove that he was still alive.

In return, among other ideas and stories, Kaito explained in full detail his plans for Tokyo Tower on the day he turned twenty (water-soluble pink paint on every surface), Aoko turned twenty (blue lights strung from top to bottom), and Hakuba turned twenty (flying a Union Jack from the top). Hakuba had been less than amused, but Kudou promised to pull it off to the letter, grinning conspiratorially.

By ten, all three teens were fighting yawns, and the potato-chip poker game came to a close.

"If you want to get the extra futons out, you can set up on the floor in my room. Mom will be back early tomorrow, and she doesn't need to walk in on you in the den."

Kaito smiled wryly at Kudou's offer. "I hear that. Come on, Hakuba-kun."

_And much as I'd like to use Solomon-san's tea, the last thing I need is to be dependent on a drink to be willing to sleep. Bad habit to start. And we don't know if it's possible to build up a tolerance to it…_

Logic notwithstanding, Kaito still crawled into bed reluctantly, pulling his blanket nearly over his head as he tried to force himself to relax enough to drop off.

_Please… Not tonight… Not again…_

He slept.

* * *

_"Good afternoon, detective," Kaito purred._

_Kudou instantly came to a dead stop, gripping the top of his cane so tightly his knuckles turned white._

_Kaito's smile widened at the reaction. "Ah, so you_ do _remember me."_

_"What do you want?" The detective's voice was low and rough, smothered anger bubbling just under the surface._

_"Have you ever played chess? The queen is the more effective fighter, but without the king," Kaito gestured slightly with a hand, even knowing Kudou wouldn't see it, "the game ends."_

_"...I've played on occasion. It's not my favorite game, but I know how."_

_Kaito chuckled in satisfaction. "Welcome to my chess game, Kudou-kun. The rules are simple. You don't tell anyone about me. If you can catch up to me and catch me, you win. If you don't, I get away to have more fun in the future. In return... as long as you don't break any rules, you get to live, and so do all your little friends."_

_Kudou growled. "Don't you have better things to do than pick on a blind man?"_

_"Mmm, my... colleagues... are psychopathic bores," Kaito replied with a twisted little smirk. "You're amusing. Given that you had the bad manners to survive, the least you could do is provide some challen—"_

"Kuroba!" Hakuba's muted hiss broke into the dream, and Kaito woke with a startled gasp to being shaken by the shoulder.

"…Hakuba-kun?" He swallowed down the rising nausea, but couldn't seem to clamp down entirely on the faint tremors rippling through his frame like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

_Just a dream. JUST A DREAM._

Hakuba relaxed a fraction in the dim ambient light. "Thank heavens. I wasn't certain, but you had that same look as the last time you were dreaming…"

"You were right." Kaito swallowed again and sat up, bringing Kudou's sleeping form into view. It wasn't _his_ Kudou, but this one wasn't blinded by his own hand, wasn't chasing him for murder, wasn't… broken. Even if he wasn't Kudou any more, technically. Kaito reached out, hand stopping just shy of making contact, before pulling back and running it through his own hair instead with a quiet curse.

"Was it the same one as last time?" Hakuba inquired softly.

Kaito nodded, massaging the back of his neck as he tried to shut the images out again. "Like a bad memory that keeps coming back." He glanced back at Hakuba as a thought struck him. "You were already awake? It can't be past three yet."

Hakuba shifted slightly. "Yes, well… I had a dream. Not a nightmare, per se, simply… odd."

Kaito cocked his head. "Want to talk about it?" Hakuba'd heard all about his own dreams, it was only fair to offer the same… and he'd gladly take a distraction right now.

Hakuba shrugged. "It was… there was a walled garden. Not large, perhaps the size of my lab at home, and seemed… familiar, but I'd swear I've never seen it before. Even the choice of plants and design was unusual—traditional Japanese except for along the walls, where there were tea roses and ivy. I was there, but… still a child, and playing with another boy. Identical. I called him Eishu…"

Hakuba looked down, voice sounding oddly tight. "It was so peaceful… nothing but a dream. I shouldn't have woken up feeling…"

Kaito eyed Hakuba's body language. "…Like you'd lost something?"

"…I don't know. Perhaps."

"Weird. Well… I guess if it's important, it'll come up again."

_Suspicions of age bracket aside, one dream isn't enough to be considered anything more than processing fragments._

And Kaito _really_ hoped the dream was just a response to seeing him and Kudou in the same place for a few hours.

"Mmm." Hakuba sighed. "Are you going to sleep again?"

Kaito chuffed faintly. "No." He glanced back at Kudou's bed. "If it weren't for disappearing, I'd say we could go now…"

"But we shouldn't leave without saying goodbye, and thank you."

_Not if we want Kudou to be sure that we weren't just a hallucination…_

"Don't worry about that." As Kaito twitched, Kudou opened his eyes and propped up on one elbow, switching on the bedside lamp. "Sorry. I didn't want to interrupt, but I don't sleep very deeply any more."

Kaito half-smiled. "I know the feeling. There's days I wish I were an elf."

"Kuroba-kun, when have you had _time_ to read Tolkien?"

"Between Harry Houdini's journals and Sun Tzu's _Art of War,_ " Kaito answered promptly.

"…Why do I even ask?" Hakuba sighed.

"Because you still haven't learned better?" Kudou asked with a little smile.

"Apparently so."

"But anyway," Kaito added, "we ought to be moving on. Thanks for letting us stay."

"I should be the one thanking you, for everything," Kudou responded. "Thanks, and be careful. I hope you get home."

"Me, too," Kaito replied dryly.

_Because if we_ don't _…_

He shook his head, forcing the thought out of his mind, and looked down at himself. "We're still wearing your clothes." The soaked clothes had already been retrieved and folded before they slept, and belonging replaced into the dried bags, but changing back had felt like too much effort.

Kudou laughed quietly. "Keep them. I meant it when I said I was never wearing that shirt again."

"Thanks." Covering a yawn, Kaito collected his bag while Hakuba grabbed his own, and smiled at Kudou. "Take care of yourself."

Kudou nodded. "You, too."

"We'll head out, then… I want to walk a little before trying to do this again."

They managed to leave the house without difficulty, and walked down the pre-dawn street for a minute. Hakuba seemed content to walk in silence, still looking pensively thoughtful.

Two blocks away, Kaito finally halted. "Okay. You ready?"

Hakuba nodded, hand subtly tightening on his staff. "Do it."

Kaito nodded back, took a deep breath, and once more, _-pulled-_ for home.


	2. Black Ice Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Magicverse is the creation of Ellen Brand, the Amazing and Patient IdeasTaster, and is used with permission. TWH is now also graciously beta'd by RandomImagination. Many thanks to both of them.

_Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony_  
 _(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,_  
 _Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,_  
 _Is not in question) are likewise permanent_  
 _With such permanence as time has._  
\- Dry Salvages (II.56-60)

* * *

The rip opened silently, heralded only by Kaito abruptly feeling like the past six hours of sleep had never happened, and had taken a fair chunk of what remained of his energy reserves with them. On the other side, however, was not the street between his and Aoko's houses that they were currently standing on, but an alleyway heavy with evening shadows.

"Come on," he sighed. "Let's go see if this worked."

"Weren't you aiming for _home_?" Hakuba inquired, though he followed Kaito through anyway.

Kaito shook his head. "The house could still be standing and look the same no matter what insanity was going on. I aimed for Aoko, out of sight. She's..." _Mine. Home._ "More unique, and not about to make us risk showing up in a hospital storage closet like mom would."

"Mmm. Sensible," Hakuba allowed, looking around.

"…I don't know. I think that's Haido Park over that way, across the street." Kaito padded towards the nearest intersection in the alleyway. "She likes the little one by our house better, not to mention she's usually home around sunset, and doesn't shop out this wa—"

He stopped abruptly, holding up a hand for silence, as a disturbingly familiar voice reached his ears.

"Aoko… You need to go."

Around the corner, Aoko's louder and fiercely determined voice countered, "I'm _not_ leaving you here, Saguru. I'd never make it alone anyway, and we need to get you to Ran-san before…"

_DAMN_ _IT_.

"Why didn't it _work?_ " Kaito growled softly, half to himself and half to Méraud.

_:I… I hesitate to speculate with so little information,:_ Méraud murmured, though she didn't sound happy.

"Speculate anyway, with Dark Sage and whoever else if you have to, while we figure out what's gone screwy with _this_ place," Kaito half-asked, half-ordered under his breath, then beckoned to Hakuba, who nodded.

_I might have my own problems—and we're not going there, thank you—but I'll be damned before I ignore Aoko and Hakuba in trouble._

_Any Aoko and Hakuba._

_The only complication is going to be how they react to_ _**us** _ _…_

Rounding the corner into the other alley, Kaito immediately discovered that the reaction was 'Not well.'

Aoko whirled at the sound of their footsteps to face them, snatching up a long tube of cardboard from a trash pile and shifting into a _very_ familiar mop-fu stance. Except that a moment later, the makeshift weapon's tip suddenly burst into long, flickering, blue-white flames.

_Erk._

"Don't come any closer!" Aoko ordered, eyes flashing in a mixture of fear and danger and desperation, but not a significant level of surprise. Behind Aoko, the other Hakuba leaned heavily against the alley wall, sweating and pale, cradling his right arm with the other.

_Didn't use my name, so apparently doesn't seem to think that I'm… me. Him._

… _Dammit, we need a whole new set of pronouns. Him._

A distant, dispassionate part of Kaito's brain also helpfully pointed out that he was currently facing a pyrokinetic mop. There was no telling how far impersonation could be taken in such a world.

"I don't know who you really are or what you want," Aoko continued darkly, "but frankly, I don't have _time_ for it. Stay away from us and you won't get burned."

"I want to go _home_ ," Kaito answered as calmly as he could, "but it's not working too well. I'm Kuroba Kaito, son of Touichi and Mizuki, best friends with Nakamori Aoko since I gave her a rose in front of the Clocktower when we were five. This is Hakuba Saguru, son of Seiichi and Elizabeth, and when he transferred into our class he prefaced his introduction with the time down to the millisecond."

"Which you promptly parodied every morning for the next three days," Kaito's Hakuba—screw it, his was Saguru and theirs was Hakuba, or this was going to be even more confusing than hell—added with wry amusement. "As I recall, it took a whispered threat from Aoko-kun to make you stop. Did she know you were ichthyphobic by then?"

"Yeah. She promised to bring another fish from the market to class unless I found something new to do."

"Of course." Saguru turned to their audience, who were watching them with a mixture of confusion and amusement. "Mad as it may sound, we seem to be traveling between realities alternate to our own."

"Really?" Behind Aoko, Hakuba spoke for the first time, sounding exhausted as he lapsed into English. "Where's... your TARDIS?"

Saguru jerked a thumb at Kaito and answered in the same language, "You're looking at him. Time, space, and relativity, too."

"And I even have a working chameleon circuit," Kaito deadpanned.

Hakuba chuckled, and Aoko lowered her makeshift weapon slightly in bemusement.

Saguru took a cautious step forward. "We only want to help. How badly are you hurt?"

Hakuba smiled tightly and replied with forced lightness, "Oh, the wound is only minor. It's the infection that you have to worry about."

He shifted, forcing himself to stand unaided, and Kaito caught a glimpse of ink-black streaks creeping beyond the cuff of Hakuba's sleeve across the back of his right hand, slowly but inexorably expanding across the skin.

Kaito hissed through his teeth at it. "Edogawa-kun can do something about that?"

Aoko shook her head. "Mouri Ran-san. She's a healer, the closest we know of…"

"We're running out… of time…" Hakuba broke in. "He's getting closer…"

Kaito's fists clenched, not even bothering to ask how Hakuba knew. "Your Kaito?"

_It would just figure._

Hakuba gave him a bleak look. "Or Kid. I'm not sure… which it is now. Soon enough, it'll be… neither."

"So if you plan on borrowing a car or something, you'd better do it now," Aoko added, voice tight.

…Aoko knew. She didn't so much as twitch at Hakuba identifying Kaito as Kid, and apparently the other Kaito was neither dead or maimed. But there was no time to think about that, because she was also watching him now, expression twisting with impatience and the desperate need to be anywhere but here.

Kaito glanced down at his hands, then back up. "It's definitely an 'or something', and I don't know for sure how well it'll work, but…"

Saguru moved the sunglasses that had been hanging on their chain around his neck to perch atop his hair, then closed the distance to his doppelganger.

"Do it. This had bloody well better not short out the universe," he added under his breath, and pulled the uninjured arm over his shoulder, taking the other's weight.

Nothing happened.

_Oh, goody. The universe still exists to mock us._

"Right." Kaito reached out towards the alley wall, and for _Detective-Rival-Theirs-HERE-Now-Hiding-Hoping_ , and – _pulled–._

"Holy…" Aoko swore as the Shadowrift opened, while Kaito sagged, energy nearly sapped beyond his limit.

" _Go_ ," Hakuba ordered urgently, shepherding Aoko ahead of him and Saguru into the brightly lit main room of the Mouri's apartment.

Kaito turned to follow, and his blood suddenly froze as the flat, mocking laughter straight out of his nightmares reverberated down the alley and across his nerves. He darted through the rift more concerned with dropping the Shadows like they had fins and scales than curtailing his momentum, and he collided with the two blonds hard enough that they all dropped to the floor in a jumbled heap.

"Gah… You okay, Hakuba-kun?"

Saguru grunted, moving Hakuba's left hand from where it had narrowly missed bumping against his bare cheek. "Unscathed."

"What the _hell_?"

The outburst was ridiculously cheering.

_Ah, tantei-kun. Freaked out, but properly little again._

Kaito forced himself up to his knees, but then promptly slumped sideways against the nearest wall in exhaustion while Saguru helped Hakuba sit up and Aoko explained, "Long story, Saguru-kun got tagged by a shard of black ice."

Conan cursed foully, and yelled at one of the closed doors, "RAN-NEECHAN!"

The door immediately burst open and Ran raced in, skidding to a halt as she caught sight of their faces.

"… Oh dear." Taking in the appearance of Hakuba's hand, which was entirely black now, and the dark streaks that were starting to creep up his neck, her expression hardened. "Conan-kun, go get the restraints. Then make a pot of coffee, the way you like it."

"Got it, Ran-neechan!"

Conan raced off, and Ran approached Hakuba, gesturing to Saguru. "Help me get his coat off."

"Thank… you…" Hakuba rasped as they wrestled with the jacket, which pulled away to reveal the sickeningly black sheen of the skin beneath his torn shirtsleeve.

"Don't thank me yet," Ran ordered, accepting a set of thick leather cuffs from Conan before he dashed off again. "This is going to hurt."

"…Worth it."

"Be careful, Ran-san," Aoko interjected, taking the coat out of their way. "He's a Lightning-tosser…"

From his vantage point, Kaito saw Saguru pause and blink.

"He is?" Ran asked, surprised, then mused, "The thing you learn about people… All right, everyone stand back." She grabbed Saguru's arm as he started to move away. "Sorry, except for you. I need you to help me hold him if he starts thrashing."

… _Good thing those gloves are leather._

Saguru simply nodded, repositioning himself by Hakuba's legs as Aoko moved a few steps back, biting her lip, and Ran helped Hakuba lie down on the floor.

Forcing himself to stay awake and upright, Kaito watched through half-lidded eyes as Ran began to glow with a soft green light, and carefully placed one hand just below the wound, and the other on top of Hakuba's heart.

Approximately 0.562 seconds later (British Detective Time), Hakuba _screamed_. Almost simultaneously, Aoko's arms crossed over her stomach, eyes shut tight in concentration with a hint of pain.

"Hold him!" Ran cried, grip tightening and hands glowing brighter as electricity danced up and down Hakuba's writhing frame. "If I can't purge it…"

Saguru said nothing, but he held on…

…And a short eternity later Hakuba went limp.

Ran removed her hands, slumping tiredly as Conan entered bearing a tray with three coffee mugs. "Someone else… is going to have to… treat that arm," she sighed, accepting the first mug from him.

"I can do that." Aoko knelt down, placing Hakuba's jacket beneath his head and gently squeezing his shoulder as he gave her a smile of bone-deep exhaustion. "I'm good at first aid."

"When you're done, that coffee is for him," Conan commented, waving at the mug resting on the table. He approached Kaito with the third mug and a sharp, probing look in his eyes. "Here you go. Like my dad says, black as sin and sweet as death."

_And coffee first, interrogation later._

Kaito took it carefully with both hands, willing them to not shake. "Thanks."

"Just stay awake to explain what the hell is going _on_ ," Conan grumped, looking over his shoulder at Saguru and Hakuba. It had to be killing his curiosity as to why they looked nearly identical, except that Hakuba's hair was long enough to cover the tops of his ears and he lacked Saguru's new trio of accessories—sunglasses, gloves, and the staff still lying on the ground.

Kaito blew on the coffee and took a sip, savoring the boatload of sugar that cut through the coffee's bitter flavor. "I'm all for staying awake."

A short, wry chuff from Saguru acknowledged the blond's awareness of how big an understatement the sentiment was.

"First things first," Ran declared, sounding a bit more alert, as Aoko settled down with the first aid kit. "How did he get poisoned _inside_ the city?"

"My apologies, Mouri-kun," Saguru interrupted before Aoko could answer, "but I'm afraid this _is_ rather more basic. Kuroba-kun and I are from an alternate reality, drawn here during our attempt to reach home from… a place very nearly outside reality altogether. We're likely going to need more explanations than you would expect, to understand how this situation came about."

Saguru, Kaito decided, was teetering somewhere between tired, worried, and ticked off. He wouldn't be that verbose, otherwise.

"Hell," Conan muttered. "Do you even know what Darklings are?"

Kaito shook his head, pensive. "Our monsters from the Dark are black with gold eyes, but they aren't spread via infection like that. Even though they do attack people to make more of themselves. Heartless are… a fragment existence, created pretty much instantaneously when Darkness breaks a person apart."

The others, particularly Aoko and Hakuba, shuddered.

"Darklings are… twisted," Aoko explained as she painstakingly cleaned and bandaged Hakuba's arm. "Dark magic gets into your system and… changes you. Kaito was attacked by a Darkling… we didn't see it, but we both felt it. Then he attacked us, and Saguru got slashed while we were getting away."

Now Kaito shuddered, curling up further around his mug of coffee at the memory of the Darkness corridor pressing against him, and of Saguru's own reaction to feeling the Dark even more keenly than Kaito could.

"…Felt?" Saguru's voice was deceptively nonchalant as he eyed his other.

"It must be a very alternate reality indeed," Hakuba muttered thoughtfully.

"What kind of magic do you have, where you're from?" Conan prodded, glancing between them as he tried to deduce who had opened the Shadowrift, and how.

Kaito smiled tiredly. "Low-level psychic stuff. I'm a bit of an exception, as a reality-bender with actual training from a friendly pocket-dimension inhabitant. Long story. The hole in your living room was me opening a tesseract between an alley in Ekoda and you."

"Do you ever do _anything_ small?" Conan demanded, a shade irritably.

Kaito considered this. "…No?"

"And the terminology is a bugger," Saguru volunteered. "I'm not certain I entirely understand it, and I was given a summary by someone who _did_."

Hakuba sighed as Aoko finished and helped him sit up. "As for here, there's… we'll say six natural elements, thought it's a little more complicated. People can be born with one, two, or very rarely, three of those elements. Kaito has Air and Water, the Yin and Yang Mind types. I have Lightning and Wood, respectively the Yang and Yin of Spirit. Aoko has Fire, the Yang to Earth's Yin for Body, and Ran-san has Wood. One of Wood's talents is to purify, as you saw. My primary is Lightning, however, so it does little more than boost my own ability to resist infection."

"Except once," Aoko added, handing Hakuba his coffee mug, "when Kaito, Saguru and I were attacked by a low-level feral Darkling on the way to the movies, and it slashed me before it died. I'm not as strong as Saguru, so it went faster, and he needed help from Kaito to stop it… so we all pushed, together. And bonded. We can sense each other, now…"

"But all we sense from Kaito is cold and Darkness. We're keeping him human, and what he's becoming will track us down to turn or kill us for just that reason."

Kaito's grip on his coffee mug tightened enough to almost crack ceramic, and he ignored Conan's curious look as he shoved the memory of Saguru's dead eyes as deep into the back of his mind as possible. Saguru wasn't dead, dammit, and Kaito would bend reality to the breaking point and beyond before he let that happen.

Saguru also glanced back over his shoulder at Kaito, but then refocused on the more important conversation. "How long until he arrives here, then?"

"Not long," Aoko offered quietly. "He'll have to take rooftops, but he's so fast across those…"

Hakuba nodded in agreement. "Perhaps thirty minutes, if we're lucky."

Ran yawned. "It will probably knock me out afterwards, but if someone can restrain him, I should be able to purify him when he arrives."

Saguru picked up the restraints that had held Hakuba. "…I'm afraid we may have a problem doing that."

Aoko dropped her head in her hands. "Oh, kami. Kaito and handcuffs. Bad mix."

"Yes, he has a distressing tendency to take them apart and occasionally try to _improve_ them." The glance Saguru gave Kaito was rueful, but not annoyed.

Hakuba swore. "Yes, I'm aware of that. We'll need something else."

"Is there any way to restrain him magically, that he couldn't easily break?" Saguru suggested.

"Hold on." Conan disappeared briefly into his room, then returned with a pair of metal handcuffs that glinted a bit, but otherwise seemed normal. "Here… they're mine. Technically, there's a seventh element. Metal. Only accessible to bloodlines that have someone who made a contract with a Metal Dragon, and other magic can't affect it. Hard to manipulate at my age, but... I've got a lot of practice. These are metal-element forged. The ghost of Houdini couldn't get out."

Saguru raised an eyebrow. "Impressive."

"Gotta have _some_ leverage," Conan admitted with a little grin.

"Mmm, quite. … If the impossibility of Hakuba-san and I together gave him a moments pause, a soccer ball to the head might be sufficient chance to get him down and cuffed."

Conan smiled, only a little bit wryly. "I'm guessing your world has a version of me, too?"

"In a rather similar situation to yourself. Edogawa Conan, now age 8, ward of the recently famous Mouri Kogoro-san. Tends to chase Kid when I'm not in Japan."

Conan nodded. "Nakamori-keibu lets me come to heists here because I'm the only one who can see through Kid's glamours without trying. Illusion is an Air discipline," he added. "Kid's really, _really_ good at it, and tends to use it in combination with Water's Protean—shape-shifting, basically, which I can't see through but it's a _lot_ harder to keep up."

Kaito couldn't help but grin a little as Saguru raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Bloody hell. As if his traditional disguises weren't bad enough. You're generally at heists because Mouri-san has been invited to attend by the police, or Suzuki Jiroichi-san."

"Huh. Weird…"

Saguru was eyeing Conan thoughtfully now. "…You're finally going to catch him. Congratulations."

Conan snorted. "This doesn't count. It's outside the game, and it's to get him _back_. Kid's a pain in the butt, but he's not a monster. He sure as hell doesn't deserve this, and we need to catch him before he can do something he'll never be able to live with. After that…" He shrugged. "Well, I won't go to the cops. Anything else, we'll wait and see."

… _Really?_

Outside the conversation, brain still in a mental fog despite the empty coffee mug, Kaito watched Saguru give Conan a smile with a few more teeth than strictly necessary. "Good. It's not my place to speculate, but if the reasons driving this one are what I suspect… they're very good reasons indeed."

Conan glanced at Kaito, then back. "You'd know, huh?" He gave Hakuba and Aoko similarly considering looks. "You, too?"

"Not our place to say," Hakuba demurred, taking another long sip of coffee.

"And there's more pressing concerns," Saguru added. "You said Kuroba-san has Water and Air, but only mentioned—"

He broke off abruptly with a curse, grabbing his staff and scrambling to his feet. Dark fog had begun to creep past the door into the apartment.

"He's here…" Aoko helped Hakuba get to his feet, before he squeezed her hand.

"Stay behind us." She nodded, moving to stand beside where Kaito had shifted into a crouch but was saving his energy to stay awake rather than stand. Then Hakuba added to Saguru, "Don't look him in the eyes."

Saguru tightened his grip on his staff. "Something you neglected to mention?"

"Darklings have tainted abilities. Mind types like Kaito have Fascination."

"Bloody hell."

"Could be worse, he could have Body-type magic. They can Shadowwalk."

_Ooh, now there's a thought…_

Without taking his eyes from the door, Saguru declared, "I can hear you scheming from over here, Kuroba-kun."

Kaito mustered his best innocent look, but there was no time to reply because Kid's laughter finally breached the door to echo through the room.

He shuddered again, hand straying to his card case.

_Kami help me, I_ hate _that laugh._

Across the room, the lock turned with a sharp little _'snik'_ , and the door opened to frame the other Kaito in the doorway.

Kaito froze, staring.

… _Hello, new nightmares._

Some bastard with a sense of humor had run Kid through a dark mirror. White and red silk had inverted to purest black, with the blue shirt darkening to match, and the now-black monocle and charm had flipped sides to cover the left eye—the 'sinister' eye, for anyone who knew their Latin. The top hat had vanished altogether, giving unhindered view to a pair of slit-pupil golden eyes with black streaks curving out and down from the corners across Kid's cheeks.

_Like crow wings_ , Kaito's mind supplied before he could stop it.

The golden eyes swept the room, catching for just a moment on Kaito before continuing to settle on Hakuba and Saguru. Then Kid _grinned_ , and redefined the term 'fanged smile'.

"Hello, double images. Raising the dead now, Saguru?"

"Oh, God," Saguru whispered, face turning pale.

Still grinning, Kid took a step towards them and continued, "Or did you have a third locked away in an attic that you never told the world about?"

Tight-lipped, Hakuba replied, "Family are not possessions."

Unconcerned, Kid took another step, raising a hand to turn a tendril of dark fog into a handful of black ice shards floating in mid-air. "No, but _you're_ mine. _Aoko_ …"

Aoko looked up reflexively at the call that had too many harmonics to be normal, and met his eyes.

" _Come here."_ The other hand extended, giving them a glimpse of the same crow-wing pattern streaked across its back from the webbing of the thumb.

"…Yes…" She walked forward.

"No," Saguru interrupted coldly as she passed him, one arm wrapping around her shoulders and gloved hand covering her eyes. The blond's eyes were firmly fixed at a point on Kid's torso. "She's not yours to have."

Kid's smile disappeared, eyes narrowing. "Let her go. They're mine. They're _both_ mine, imposter-san."

Hakuba spoke up, voice quiet and just a little bit too even. "Not like this."

"Always so bound to _rules_ , Saguru… We're going to have to change that."

"Rules can bend," Kaito's Saguru admitted with a wry smile. "But you want to shatter them. Without the rules, how do you hold yourself together?" He raised an eyebrow. "You're starting to shatter… Kaito."

Kid growled. "You be _quiet_. You don't get to call me that." The small shards of ice merged together into a single, wickedly sharp icicle.

In a display of the least common sense Saguru had shown since he'd followed Riku and Kaito into a Darkness corridor, the detective snorted.

"Why? I _know_ you, Kaito." He favored Kid with a mirthless little smirk. "And since you've never been any good at following the rules… why are you following the standard Darkling transformation process? I thought you were stronger than that."

Kaito winced slightly at the faintest of edges in Saguru's voice hinting that he wasn't only trying to distract Kid. Though it was working.

"Shut _up_!" The icicle flew forward, just clipping Saguru's coat sleeve as he dropped to the ground, pulling Aoko with him.

_NOW!_

Conan jumped up, activating his ridiculous-but-useful inflatable soccer ball and sending the projectile straight for Kid's head. Impossibly, Kid managed to dodge before it could impact… but it didn't really matter.

Kaito drew on one last adrenaline surge and launched in the soccer ball's wake, hitting Kid from the side before he could recover his balance. Pivoting as they fell so that he landed sitting on Kid's stomach, Kaito pulled at every Shadow he could reach to _–wrap–_ and _–bind–_ and _–hold–_ as he glared down at the other's golden eyes.

_You do_ _**not** _ _get to hurt_ _**my** _ _detective._

"You've twisted so far you don't get it any more, do you?" he growled. "She's not your possession. She's a gift. He's a gift. And you're going to _destroy_ them if you don't stop."

"What the… Who the hell _are_ you?"

Kaito bared his teeth. "I'm the you that you couldn't get rid of, no matter how hard you try."

For the briefest of moments, a strip of blue ringed Kid's pupils. "Can't… my head…"

" _Fight_ ," Kaito ordered, beckoning to the others. "They're waiting for you."

A moment later, Saguru was there, turning Kid to handcuff his wrists behind his back, and Conan brushed a hand over the lock to make them solid circles of metal. On his other side, Ran knelt down with Aoko and Hakuba in tow, Hakuba leaning on Aoko as the only thing letting him move.

"Do it, Mouri-kun," Kaito hissed, feeling the Shadows beginning to slip through his grasp. Kid's eyes were pure gold again, and he smiled unpleasantly.

"You have to move," she responded, hands beginning to glow. "Your aura will interfere."

Kaito blinked. "…Oh. …Catch him…"

He let himself roll away towards Saguru, too exhausted to do anything but collapse against the carpet after one turn. Ran pounced before Kid could try escaping, and Kaito nearly had his hip broken by a black leather shoe as Kid let out an inhuman _howl_ , before Saguru hooked an arm around his torso and pulled him well out of appendage range.

"Idiot."

"You're one to talk," Kaito mumbled, head lolling.

Saguru caught Kaito's head with his free hand and turned it so Kaito was looking up at him. "I'm not the one who is as limp as a wet noodle."

"Noodle incident… wasn't my fault."

_Wait… He wasn't talking about that,_ Kaito realized belatedly as Saguru gave him a concerned look. _Oops?_

"Aoko-san, Hakuba-kun…" Kaito opened eyelids he hadn't realized had closed to see Ran with sweat running down her face. "I need you here… help me!"

Dark. Open eyes again. Command them to stay open.

"We're here." Hakuba gave Aoko a wry smile as he placed his hands lower than Ran's, on Kid's neck. "Just like last time."

"Right." Aoko placed her hands over his, and together they began to glow as well. Slowly, the black streaks on Kid's skin faded away, and even the suit somehow shifted into a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

Dark again. Eyes only make it halfway open. Silently plead to not close, because closed is sleep and sleep is full of Darkness…

"A…Aoko?" Kaito's voice rasped, except it was the other Kaito, not him. At least, he didn't feel his mouth moving, and his doppelganger's eyes looked blue again. "Saguru?"

_Hey, he looks like how I feel…_

Dark.

… Eyes don't open.

No energy to panic.

Eyes don't open.

Darkness...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promenade and The Way Home operate under a timeline that assumes the following:
> 
> 1\. Kaito became Kid during the summer of High School year one.  
> 2\. Saguru transferred six months later into a grade lower than his age would suggest, since February is almost the end of the school year and Japanese curriculum is rigorous. This leaves him ten months older than Kaito and thirteen months older than Aoko.  
> 3\. Shini'chi shrank into Conan a month and change after Saguru's transfer, during the first week of HS year two in April. He turned seven(teen) a month later.  
> 4\. Promenade began approximately the first week of HS year three, encompassing about two months time, and The Way Home picked up the narrative immediately after Promenade's ending—in other words, about late May. Conan is now eight(teen), Saguru is eighteen, and Kaito turns eighteen in about a month.


	3. Frostmelt

_We appreciate this better_  
 _In the agony of others, nearly experienced,_  
 _Involving ourselves, than in our own._  
 _For our own past is covered by the currents of action,_  
 _But the torment of others remains an experience_  
 _Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition._  
 _People change, and smile: but the agony abides._  
 _Time the destroyer is time the preserver_  
\- Dry Salvages (II.61-68)

* * *

As Aoko thoroughly hugged the stuffing out of Kuroba, Saguru felt the tension in Kaito's frame abruptly lessen. He glanced down to see that much like Ran, who was curled up on the carpet and out like a light, the other teenager had fallen asleep. It wasn't much of an improvement, serving only to highlight the lines of fatigue in Kaito's face without his usual animation to draw attention away from them.

"It's okay, Kaito," Aoko murmured, bringing Saguru's attention back to the other trio. "We've got you, you're safe…"

"I… Oh, Kami-sama…"

Hakuba's arms wrapped around both of them, supporting Kuroba and leaning against Aoko as the purified magician trembled like a leaf in a thunderstorm. "You're all right, Kaito. It's over."

… It was odd, Saguru decided, to see Kuroba practically burrow into both of them for comfort, close and open on a level he'd never thought possible while the magician was still Kid, and possibly not even after the thief finally vanished again.

As Hakuba had said, a very alternate universe indeed.

Disturbing them seemed wrong, somehow, and so he simply shifted Kaito to rest beside him, head pillowed on the small side bag Saguru hadn't had time to take off amidst the previous chaos. Kaito hardly twitched at the movement. Saguru lightly rested a hand on Kaito's shoulder to monitor for a nightmare's restlessness— _Please not now, not after this—_ and let his mind wander thoughtlessly for a bit.

He didn't want to start thinking again until his double was free to talk, lest he start to wonder about Kid's comment regarding raising the dead... He forced his mind to blank, not holding onto any thought long enough to process it.

Sooner than Saguru wanted, though, a small body sat down in the wedge of carpet between his outstretched legs and Kaito's sleeping form. Saguru flicked his gaze to check on the others, and found nothing had changed except that Ran had been supplied with a pillow and blanket. He looked back down to the pair of too-old blue eyes imprisoned behind glass.

"… Yes?"

Edogawa took a deep breath. "At heists, it's too easy to forget that even though he created the game—or at least restarted it—he's not playing. I won't ask you what he's looking for, because that would be cheating, but… it has to do with the people who murdered his father, right?"

"Yes." Saguru watched Edogawa's eyes narrow, half unable to believe that a person could lose ten years overnight, and half unable to believe that he hadn't seen the truth before. He'd been too focused on catching Kid's imposter the first time they'd met, and then on Kaito being missing, to associate the child's mannerisms with a detective he'd only heard of.

"I wonder," he murmured quietly, "if you could satisfy my curiosity about something." Edogawa raised an eyebrow, head cocking curiously, and Saguru continued, "I—we—know who you are, back home. However, I confess I can't seem to fathom how you were drawn into your current… situation."

And while asking the Kudou from the night before would have caused unnecessary pain, this Edogawa wouldn't be any worse off for the inquiry. In fact, he simply smiled wryly.

"I guess if you're not sticking around, and already know enough to get yourself killed, it doesn't matter so much if I tell you. I followed a suspicious man in black at an amusement park to an extortion meeting, and was careless enough that his partner got the drop on me. They gave me a poison that was supposed to be untraceable—it kills by triggering apoptosis and then breaking down in the bloodstream almost immediately—and left me for dead. Instead I woke up like this somehow."

"Regenerated." Saguru blamed Hakuba's earlier TARDIS quip for the terminology, but it really did fit. He absently tightening his grip as Kaito's shoulder shifted beneath his hand, trying to catch hold of a thought drifting just out of reach.

"Mmm," Edogawa agreed. "Turning back the stream of time. Hell of a lot harder to do for the living than making a revenant. What I've found points to them trying to find a way to do it."

"A… Hell. There are no undead where we come from, except in the horror genre of fiction. But trying to regain lost youth…" Saguru's eyes narrowed. Eternal rejuvenation was a classic enough approach to immortality. And if you looked at it that way… "It's strange, isn't it… Assassins in the shadows after a thief dancing in spotlight, and a mysteriously hidden mafia organization… and no turf wars at all."

Edogawa went _pale_ , and let loose a quiet string of curses that had no place in the mouth child of his apparent age. He even included a few that Saguru had never heard before, despite extended exposure to Inspector Nakamori.

"That's really rather disturbing to hear from someone your size, Edogawa-kun."

"Yeah, well." Edogawa massaged his temples briefly, then stopped and looked closer at Kaito. "Oi… that doesn't look good."

Saguru followed his gaze to see Kaito's brow furrowed in a dishearteningly familiar manner, and he quickly shook the other boy's shoulder. "Kuroba-kun! Come on, wake up."

Unlike the morning's quick awakening, Kaito didn't react. Saguru swore a great deal louder than Edogawa had done.

"Not again…" He swallowed, hard. "I'm going to regret this."

_But I need to know if this is the same as before… and no one should face a nightmare they can't wake up from, alone._

Before Edogawa could ask what he meant by that, Saguru quickly pulled off a glove, gathered all the worry and frustration and concern he'd been ignoring for the last day and change, and dropped his hand against Kaito's neck.

* * *

When his vision finally returned to normal, Saguru spent a moment looking around in confusion. This wasn't the park, like before, but rather he could see the underside of a roller coaster, metal gleaming dully in the evening sunset.

_Wait just a tick…_ _an amusement park?_

Movement caught his eye, and he turned in time for a bald businessman with sunglasses, a poor attempt at a mustache, and a look of panic on his face to run out from the shadows beneath the ride's supports and pass right through him.

Saguru shuddered. That was… horribly disconcerting, really. But there were more important things to worry about. Edogawa had followed a man in black at an amusement park at the start of his current predicament, and then the Kudou of the last dream had been described as blinded by an assassin for poking his nose where it didn't belong…

Suspicion growing, Saguru headed into the lengthening shadows beneath the roller coaster.

He stopped at the center of the crisscrossing metal as mocking laughter suddenly resounded from above and to the left. He looked up to see Kaito dressed all in black, perched on one of the coaster's support beams and grinning down at his audience of one: teenage detective Kudou Shinichi.

"How fast do you run, Detective of the East? Faster than flight? Faster than death?"

Kudou didn't bother to answer. He simply turned and ran in a flat-out sprint that would have put soccer legends to shame. In the same instant, Kaito dove off his perch into thin air—only to catch himself on one of the crossbars and flip in the same direction, sailing forward to land on an anchored support and do it again, as if the entire coaster framework were a gigantic gymnastics arena.

And as Saguru chased after them, fairly certain he was only keeping up because this was a dream, he could hear that the black-clad phantom was still bloody _laughing_ , like hunting Kudou down was the best game in the world.

Somehow, despite the nature of his pursuit, Kaito closed the distance before Kudou could get out from under the roller coaster and dropped to land beside him. During the fall, he whipped out a blackjack from somewhere Saguru couldn't see, and brought it to bear on the back of Kudou's skull with all the additional force gravity could provide.

Kudou went down like he'd been hit by a ton of bricks.

Saguru continued to watch, heart in his throat, once more invisibly barred from approaching closer than a few yards' distance.

"You should have known better than to poke your nose where it didn't belong, detective," Kaito purred—and God, Kaito had been _quoting_ before and he hadn't even dreamed this, then—as he knelt to check Kudou's pulse.

"But it's a 50-50 chance that someone might find you before you die..." Kaito's face stretched in grin mirroring the Darkling-Kaito's fanged smile, despite the fact that Kudou didn't even seem conscious. "We already beat the odds once, with our faces. Let's spin again, ne?"

He tapped Kudou on the cheek with a finger, wrapped the blackjack in a cloth and tucked it away, and then sauntered off into the twilit evening, whistling casually.

Then, blessedly, the world finally spun away into the dark.

* * *

Saguru's eyes snapped open. Beside him, Kaito bolted to his feet with a shuddering breath, and made an unsteady beeline for the agency bathroom, narrowly missing tripping over Ran and the other trio in his hurry.

"Kai—Kuroba-kun…" He let his arm drop, and then buried his face in a hand as they all heard the unmistakable sound of retching. "I need aspirin." _Or perhaps something stronger._

Faint pressure slid down his bowed head, and his sunglasses dropped to hang awkwardly against his hand. With faint surprise, he realized that Kaito's strategy of bronze had worked even beyond their intended purpose. The sunglasses had blocked Kaito's reaction to the dreams from flooding him when they woke, but hadn't interfered with the projection-oddity that let Saguru enter the dreamstate in the first place.

… Not that his presence had helped much.

"Um…" Aoko finally responded, uncertainly.

"Here." Hakuba removed a small bottle from his pocket and tossed it gently across the room. Saguru caught it with a small rattle.

"Thank you." There was no label on the bottle, but he opened it anyway to reveal a few dozen white pills that he didn't recognize. "No label?"

"They're painkillers, non-narcotic… my own creation."

"Ah, yes. Wood. Plants. I should have realized, sorry." He meticulously shook out and dry-swallowed two, closing the bottle and setting it aside before lightly pinching the bridge of his nose. "I should check on Kuroba-kun…"

"Of course." Hakuba nodded, squeezing the shoulder of his own Kuroba, who was giving Saguru a look of gleaming curiosity.

"They're dreams," Saguru explained shortly. "Of some other place that isn't home, and I hope to God doesn't exist anywhere. Don't ask." He pushed himself to his feet, feeling rather like a mouse that had been stooped by a hawk, and followed after Kaito.

He paused just inside the tiny room, gently closing the door behind him. It would provide only a veneer of privacy, given the thinness of the walls, but it was better than feeling exposed to an audience. He hadn't thought it possible for Kaito to look worse than the morning after Nightmare's heist, when the magician had actually broken down for however short a time.

He was wrong.

Kaito didn't acknowledge his presence, being rather preoccupied with losing the last of the un-metabolized coffee, and Saguru hesitated, unsure whether his presence would be welcome. Eventually deciding that if Kaito wanted him gone, he'd make it clear, Saguru crouched down close enough that his company could be sensed without Kaito feeling crowded and waited.

Finally, Kaito's stomach seemed to settle. Triggering the flush, he sat back and took a few slow, deep breaths, eyes closed.

Then, in a chillingly lifeless voice, he whispered, "I felt his skull give."

Saguru's stomach clenched. "Oh, God."

Kaito's near-non-existent Adam's apple bobbed in a convulsive little swallow. "I felt it give, and all I thought was, 'Two more feet would have finished him for sure.'"

To hell with propriety. Saguru scooted close enough to lay his hand on Kaito's shoulder, arm resting lightly across the other boy's back. Kaito shuddered violently, fists clenching, but his head dropped a little rather than attempting to pull away.

Saguru tightened his grip. "It's not you. Whatever this is, no matter how real it appears, it's not you," he promised softly. "Nor was that Kudou-kun. We'll get home, figure out what's going on, and fix this... And in the meantime, I'm going to ask them to warm up a cup of Solomon-san's tea for you."

It said a lot that Kaito didn't even offer a token protest. Instead, he continued to breathe deeply, face shifting in a dozen minute ways that Saguru didn't try to read as the younger teen slowly processed the dream—or given that this was Kaito, as he gradually locked the images away in a hundred little boxes, all tightly closed until something jarred them back open.

He eventually sighed, apparently as rebalanced as he was going to get for the moment. "...How's the other guy?"

"Recovering. Very upset, but... he and Edogawa-kun are likely at a point to have a conversation, while we wait for the tea to heat."

"Mmm. How is the miniature detective taking all this?" Kaito had never referred to Edogawa by his proper name, Saguru realized, not even as Kid. Always the title and only the title, which was just as accurately applied to Kudou as to Edogawa.

"He seems fine. A bit worried about you, though it can be difficult to tell with him. He's bloody ticked off by the attack, though, and Kuroba-san hasn't even explained how it happened yet."

Kaito nodded. "...Aoko knows, too. She doesn't seem to have maimed him."

Saguru shrugged at the free-association. "No, she doesn't. May possibly have hit him with a mop a time or two..."

"Mmm." Kaito sighed, and seemed to shelve the thought back into forbidden territory, because he changed the subject. "Even if this guy is apparently still Kid, I want to ask him about Pandora. Just in case."

"It certainly can't hurt. Shall we?"

Kaito nodded again, giving Saguru a poor attempt at a smile as they stood to head out. "Thanks."

"...Of course."

* * *

They rejoined the group in the main room in time to hear Aoko lightly scolding Kaito, "Only you would have the luck to find _another_ feral Darkling in the city, and not be able to dodge fast enough…" She trailed off to look up at them.

Kuroba shook his head, waving an invitation for Saguru and Kaito to join their loose circle on the floor as he blandly declared, "Wasn't an accident."

The other three chorused, " _What?_ ", loud enough to wake Ran.

She pushed herself upright, blinking a bit. "What's going on?"

"I believe," Saguru interjected smoothly before anyone else could answer, "that a rather important discussion needs to be held, but for the sake of being civilized it ought to include tea. May I assist you in the kitchen?"

"Oh…" Ran politely covered a yawn. "All right."

Kaito dropped to join the makeshift circle while Saguru retrieved the thermos out of the magician's bag. As he followed Ran into the kitchen and briefly explained the purpose of the tea, he heard Hakuba crisply demand,

"How, _exactly_ , was this not an accident?"

Saguru kept half an ear on the conversation as he danced around Ran in the tiny kitchen. Kuroba replied, tiredly, "Heist two days ago… bastard named Snake said They wanted me to work for Them. I said no. A feral Darkling found me today and didn't even notice anyone else. Just hunted me."

The amount of cursing the declaration engendered was impressive, with Aoko's voice rising above the others.

"Is that kind of hunting not normal?" Kaito inquired.

"No," Edogawa answered darkly. "Feral, non-sentient Darklings can track people by psychic scent, but they normally go after whatever prey is in reach. Going after Kuroba in particular is highly suspicious… and might mean these bastards have someone who can control feral ones."

Saguru shook his head. He did _not_ need something worse than sniper's bullets to fill his nightmares.

Kaito _hmm_ 'd. "So if they failed this time… are they likely to try again?"

"They damn well better not," Edogawa growled. "But…" he paused, and Saguru assumed he turned to look at Kuroba before continuing, "if they do, you can come here. And whether or not my bastards in black are the same as your assassins, count me in for taking them down."

Saguru smirked slightly to himself in the patch of silence.

"You know, chibi," Kuroba said finally, a gleeful tone creeping into his voice, "this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

"My God, what have we done?" Hakuba snarked, immediately followed by the sound of tandem headslaps. "Ow!"

"I think I like him," Saguru confided to Ran with a faint smile, and was rewarded with a giggle as she finished preparing the tea.

He quickly poured a mug of Solomon's tea for Kaito, a much smaller one for himself, and the leftovers back into the thermos. After helping Ran load the drink tray, he insisted on carrying such a heavy setup himself—for the sake of his honor as a gentleman. She gave him an amusedly tolerant smile and gave in, carrying a smaller platter with snacks instead as they returned to the main room.

Both Kaito and Kuroba mimed applause at their entrance, then caught each other's eye and shared a lopsided grin.

"So… question for you," Kaito said as Saguru and Ran put the snacks in the middle and distributed the tea. "Did you find it yet?"

Saguru chuckled softly at the bluntness of the question, and the way Edogawa's eyes snapped up from his tea to the pair of them. Kuroba smiled ruefully. "Unfortunately, no."

Kaito shrugged, wrapping his hands around his cup and inhaling the steam.

"It was worth a shot to ask, at least. Since you haven't, I can't guarantee anything, but it might be worth checking out anyway, here… Long story, but where we just came from, Kudou Shinichi-kun found it." Kaito grinned evilly as Edogawa coughed on his tea, and Kuroba's eyes went wide.

"No way."

"I did say it was a long story." Kaito took a slow sip of tea, reveling in the moment of showmanship. Saguru privately rolled his eyes. Kaito might be his idiot magician, but he was still a twit sometimes.

"Well?" Edogawa demanded, impatiently.

Kaito chuckled, and met Kuroba's eyes. "Try the Hope."

"Oh, bloody—That's going to be a logistical _nightmare_ ," Hakuba groaned.

Saguru blinked a little at the realization that Hakuba was apparently accustomed to being a part of the heists even from their planning stages. As if Hakuba wasn't...

... As if Hakuba wasn't really chasing Kid at all. Just putting on a show of his own, for anyone else who might be watching and expected the detective to try and catch the thief.

Well. That was certainly one way to go about things.

Saguru gave Hakuba another long look, and then set his mug aside, untouched, as he let his mind return to the subject he'd been trying to ignore ever since Kid had walked through the apartment door.

"I had a question as well," he murmured quietly, and his tone was apparently sufficient to cause Kaito to sit up straighter, and to catch and hold Hakuba's gaze as he tried to get his mind around the words.

"Back… earlier. Kuroba-san said… he wondered if I was related to you." Saguru looked away as Hakuba's fists clenched, only to see Kuroba paling slightly.

"Kami, Saguru," Kuroba blurted, "I'm sorry—I didn't—I wasn't—"

"It wasn't you," Hakuba responded shortly.

"My apologies, as well," Saguru added. "I wouldn't ask, it's just… I… a short while ago, a mental block over my memories previous to age six broke. So far there's still nothing more than fragments, bits and pieces… but I dreamed last night of a boy named Eishu." He dragged his eyes back up to Hakuba's face, forcing his voice steady. "I don't even know if he's real. None of my memories contain him. But I… I can't help feeling that I lost something… someone… important."

Saguru held his breath as Hakuba briefly closed his eyes, containing a wave of emotion, before his lips quirked in a bittersweet smile. "Six, huh? Maybe I was lucky… I had until we were seventeen."

Saguru's heart stopped. "Then…"

"My twin. Older by five minutes." Hakuba's eyes had gone distant, beyond where Saguru could follow. "Eric and Steven, never Eishu and Saguru. We only spoke Japanese with mother, and each other, growing up in England… if Grandmother'd had her way, we wouldn't have had Japanese names at all."

Saguru laughed, without much humor. "I shouldn't be surprised that Grandmother being an insufferable old biddy is a universal constant." It was easier to focus on her than everything else. Samantha Harcourt was the undisputed matriarch of the England Harcourt clan, and had no qualms about making any displeasure known. Saguru didn't even want to think about the arguments he was slated to have if he decided to stay in Japan on a more permanent basis again once they made it home.

"Mmm. Eric… traveled a lot, as we got older. Just after New Year's, he went to Japan… he never came home. I felt…" Hakuba shuddered. "I felt him die, in the cold and the dark, empty where there used to be light…"

He favored Aoko with a sad smile as she and Kuroba effectively sandwiched him in support. "I came… to see if I could find what was left of him, as much to chase Kid. I never did… but I found something worth staying for."

Saguru swallowed, gloved finger tracing a seam along his other hand. "Thank you." He'd have to ask someone about it once back home, to be certain, but… it felt right.

Ten years. Would they have been any different? Any better? … It didn't seem likely it could have been any worse. Except in the losing.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, family still heavy on his mind, then stopped. If Aidan had been there, still was there, Hakuba probably would have mentioned him already. And Saguru could already testify that it still hurt to suddenly lose someone you'd never known you'd had.

Instead, he commented, "You rather failed to catch Kid, I have to say. It seems more like he caught you, instead."

"Damn straight," Kuroba confirmed with a grin, lightly mussing Hakuba's hair.

The mood lightened considerably with several chuckles, and Kaito raised his mug of tea. "Good luck working together, then."

Kuroba grinned and clinked his cup against Kaito's. "You, too."

As Kuroba took a drink, Kaito raised the cup to his lips and then paused. "Um…" He looked at Ran. "I hate to impose, but is there somewhere we can crash for tonight? We can't really get out of here until I've gotten some sleep, and I'm going to be down for the count once I'm done with this."

Ran cocked her head thoughtfully. "Well, dad's out playing mahjong and won't get home until late, so there's the couch downstairs and a spare futon for the floor..."

"He won't even know you were here unless you're still asleep down there at noon," Edogawa added dryly.

"That would be best," Saguru remarked. "The less our presence is felt, the better. Barring special circumstances," he allowed with a smirk, nodding at Kuroba.

"I'll get it for you, then." Ran stood and retrieved the futon, blankets, and two pillows as Kaito blew one last time on his warm, but no longer steaming, tea.

"I call the couch." He smirked at Saguru, then tipped his head back and downed the drink in one go.

Saguru reached out and caught the mug before it could slip through Kaito's fingers. "You couldn't have waited until we were downstairs?" he inquired dryly.

Kaito shook his head, smiling brightly as the tea's herbs and brandy blurred whatever raw state of mind he was trying to ignore. "The sooner I can not think right now, the better."

Saguru sighed, not denying it. "Come on, then. I'm afraid I can't help you carry the bed things, Mouri-kun," he added as he pulled Kaito to his feet and wrapped a stabilizing arm around the magician's waist.

…He felt slighter than before. How much energy had he been burning on top of his typical insane metabolism with how sporadically had he been eating?

"I'll help," Aoko offered, moving to relieve Ran of half the load. She followed behind Saguru as he steered Kaito in Ran's wake. The magician made it as far as the door before he slumped sideways and let out a snore, which left Saguru rolling his eyes again.

"Sheesh, what was _in_ that?" Saguru paused in the doorway and looked over his shoulder as Edogawa picked up his mug and sniffed at the untouched tea. "Woah."

"Green tea, herbs, and alcohol," Saguru responded with some amusement. "It blocks out nightmares."

"Seriously?" Kuroba leaned towards Edogawa and the mug. "Can I get hold of that recipe?"

"Try the kitchen. It's on the outside of the thermos on the counter."

"Sold."

Saguru smiled. "I'll return shortly to collect the thermos, then, if you care to copy it first. I'd offer you that cup, but I don't think Hakuba-san is up to carrying you home."

Kuroba chuffed. "It would figure that we're both sensitive to alcohol, on top of all the other parallels. Still think I'm going shopping on the way home, though. I do _not_ want dreams tonight."

"You're not legally able to buy alcohol," Edogawa pointed out.

"Since when has 'legal' ever stopped me?"

"…Point," Edogawa conceded, as Saguru turned with a chuckle and maneuvered Kaito down the flight of steps to the Agency office.

With Ran and Aoko's help the sleeping arrangements were quickly set up, and Saguru headed back upstairs to collect the rest of their things. Upon entering, he found Hakuba examining his staff with interest, working up to a small lecture for the other three teenagers regarding the nature of its workmanship.

"With no external decorations, it's entirely pragmatic, but it's _extremely_ well made. You can't see it, but there's copper wire running through the oak between the endcaps, more flexible than a rod…" He paused, giving Saguru a rueful smile. "My apologies. You know how poor I am at resisting a mystery."

Saguru smiled back. "Indeed. It's quite useful, though a bit of a pain to drag around."

"Mmm, I would imagine… particularly when you have a touch component to your empathy." Hakuba smiled again, more wryly, as Saguru's eyes flared slightly in surprise. "When we hit the floor earlier, you were projecting, and my hand came close enough to your face to be inside your aura. Putting that together with the posture of a hand-to-hand fighter and that you're wearing gloves, well..."

"…I'm far too accustomed to doing that to other people. It's rather disconcerting to be on the receiving end."

"So what's the copper wire for?" Edogawa asked. "Wood makes sense as an insulator, but metal is conductive…"

Saguru's smile was not entirely nice. "Long-range projection, if I care to try."

"What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with smackdown," Kuroba snickered.

"I _did_ say it can be a pain to drag around. I haven't tried yet anywhere with an audience, and I'm not particularly looking forward to it."

Hakuba gave the staff a thoughtful look, then met Edogawa's eyes. "I wonder…"

Saguru raised an eyebrow. "Are you proposing to make alterations?"

"Well, you'd be toting around a very _dense_ oak-and-copper rod, but… I believe Edogawa-kun and I might be able to manage something."

Edogawa grinned. "Sounds like fun."

Hakuba smiled up at Saguru. "Consider it a thank you present."

"If you're going to offer… I certainly won't say no. Thank you very much."

The ensuing swift exchange of half-sentences between Hakuba and Edogawa went mostly over Saguru's head, but he watched in complete fascination when they seemed to reach an agreement, and then carefully transformed the six-foot-long pole into a ten-by-four inch cylinder.

"There's an internal catch, here," Hakuba explained when they were done, indicated a spot near the middle of the cylinder. "When you squeeze it in the right spot, it opens—" he demonstrated, careful to not hit anyone in the process, "—and twisting pressure applied to the right spots on one end or the other will trigger a spiral-collapse back inward, like so."

"That's…" Saguru shook his head. "Incredible."

"You should see him in a thunderstorm," Kuroba offered with a smile, coming out of the kitchen with the thermos in his hands. "But you look pretty done in, and we ought to be going, too. The specialty markets aren't going to be open late, and the 24-hour mart isn't going to carry some of this stuff." He waved the copied recipe for emphasis.

"Mmm." Hakuba handed Saguru the staff and stood, stretching a bit, before turning to Ran. "Thank you, Mouri-kun, for everything."

Aoko and Kuroba echoed the sentiment as Saguru gathered the thermos, both bags, and figured out how to fit the diminished staff inside his coat without fear of tearing the pocket. He exchanged his own round of goodbyes and goodnights, and headed back downstairs as Edogawa and Kuroba hammered out a time and place to meet that weekend.

It was nice to have _some_ sort of silver lining, at least. And the morning was plenty early enough to worry about everything else that needed to be worried about.

Dropping their belongings at the foot of the couch, Saguru drank the tepid cup of tea he'd carried down from the apartment in one long, slow, faint burn down his throat, and then slid between the blanket and futon and closed his eyes.

…He just wished there weren't quite so much to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to RandomImagination for betaing.
> 
> It should be noted that, sadly, the Magicverse does not exist in written form at the present time, other than this glimpse in The Way Home. With any luck, it might show up on Ellen's profile sometime in the next ten years.
> 
> Saguru's England family is entirely fanon, formulated in collaboration with Ellen. Please ask if you want to play with them too.


	4. Dark Reprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to RandomImagination for betaing. The chapter title refers to the TVTrope of the same name.
> 
> Except in spoken dialogue, first names refer to the traveling Kaito and Saguru. Last names refer to the natives of the events.

_Time present and time past_  
_Are both perhaps present in time future,_  
_And time future contained in time past._  
\- Burnt Norton (I.1-3)

* * *

When Kaito awoke, the morning sun was already high enough to stream through the agency's second-floor windows. His internal clock informed him that while he wasn't exactly _rested_ , as he'd built up far too high a sleep debt to manage that in one night, he was once again functional.

_Joy and happiness._

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, he paused and raised an eyebrow at the sight of Edogawa—No, Kudou, here where all the masks had already been dropped between them—perched on the back of the couch, watching him.

"Enjoying the view of my beauty sleep?" Kaito drawled, amused.

Kudou shook his head, sober expression at odds with his child's face. "We've been waiting for you to wake up."

Kaito glanced aside to see Saguru consuming a bowl of rice and scrambled eggs. The blond waved the chopsticks a little. "Edogawa-kun brought breakfast, if you're hungry."

Kaito's stomach promptly growled. " _Starving_. Thanks, Kudou-kun."

He slipped off the couch to the floor beside Saguru and forced himself to down his own bowl slowly enough to chew, despite feeling hungry enough to eat an oni. As he did, Kudou continued, "I forgot last night, with everything else, but there are some things you need to know."

"…That sounds ominous."

"Yeah, well…" Kudou sighed, sliding down the couch back to curl up on the cushions. "I don't know how much you know… Does the name Vermouth mean anything to you?"

Kaito promptly choked on his rice, and the ensuing hacking fit lasted for a few minutes before his lungs finally cleared.

_My respiratory system must hate me by now._

When it was over, Kudou had a look of grim sympathy. "I take it that's a yes."

"Not… quite how you think." Kaito ran a hand through his hair. "It… she's only a name and face I know from my nightmares."

Saguru swore. "You never mentioned anyone like that before now…"

Kaito gave him a sickly smile. "She's just a memory so far. That… other me's…" _If he_ is _real, only if he's real, Kami-sama don't let him be as real as this place…_ "She's the other guy's foster mother. Real name Sharon Vineyard, I think, but I… he called her Vermouth, if he called her anything at all."

Kudou growled lowly _._ "She'd be the type to have that kind of sick sense of humor. I don't know exactly how much you're paralleling us, but here she's a Naiad with Protean on par or above Kid's level of ability, and been a member for decades of the crows I'm chasing. Somewhere along the line she stopped aging or de-aged somehow, because fingerprinting confirms that Sharon Vineyard is the same person as her daughter, Chris Vineyard, and her undisguised face belongs to a woman the same age she was twenty years ago… when she was learning disguise magic along with my mother from world famous magician Kuroba Touichi."

… _Hyperventilating is not allowed,_ Kaito ordered his body, head spinning _. Your lungs can't take it._

Before Kaito trusted himself to speak, Saguru murmured softly, "If the crows are indeed behind Kid's snipers, Kid was murdered in his civilian identity..."

"Yeah," Kudou agreed. "I'm not positive that it was her, but if anyone was going to know Kuroba-san well enough to recognize Kid…" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

It likely said a lot about Kaito's state of mind that the only thing he could think to say was, "How long have you known the connection between Dad and Kid?"

Kudou smiled wryly. "I did say my mother learned _her_ mundane disguise skills from Kuroba-san. And Kid used me to send a challenge to my dad, once, ten years ago. After Ran told me you said your favorite magician was Kuroba Touichi at the Magic Lover's Club meeting, I went looking... the death of one magician so close to the disappearance of the other was pretty telling. And I've known about you since I accidentally found a picture of the two of you together from before he died."

"Oh," Kaito replied, intelligently. "He… your dad chased mine?"

"Here, at least, from what I've been able to find."

"The exclamation point…" Kaito murmured, an old memory falling into place. "My dad sent your dad a question mark under the guise of a fan, and your dad responded through your mom with just an exclamation point. No one would notice, because it wasn't unusual for Dad to have lunch with his old students."

"Careful, Kuroba-kun, you're sounding dangerously detective-like."

"Bite me, Hakuba-kun."

Kudou snickered. "You two sound like Hattori and I. I'm sorry I can't give you any more information. Just… watch your back."

"Even Kuroba-kun's flexibility has its limits," Saguru contributed, with a note in his voice that Kaito couldn't identify. "But I rather think I have enough practice from chasing it for so long."

Kudou smiled. "Good to know some things don't change."

"Some places," Kaito replied, thinking of the other Kudou they'd left behind, and sighed. "Thanks for breakfast. We'll get out of your hair soon, I just… need a little time to think."

"Sure. Judging by the snores, you've got about half an hour before the old guy makes it down."

Kaito nodded. "Thanks."

He wolfed the remainder of his breakfast, before Kudou silently gathered the dishes. Saguru collected the bed things, folding them with incredible precision, and followed Kudou. "I'll return momentarily."

Kaito nodded again, unseen, and once alone in the office curled up on the couch and dropped his head against his knees.

_When did my life get more screwed up than Kudou-kun's?_

Silence.

 _Okay. One thing at a time._ He straightened his mental whiteboard.

_One. Saguru-kun and I accidentally bailed on Riku-kun right before the big showdown. But, four keyblades and six fighters should be enough to handle Xemnas, and once we're back on the right plane of existence we can catch up and make sure everything is okay. Problem: I'm not doing too well on the 'getting home' front. Even using Aoko as a landmark, it's like whatever internal compass I'm using for this is broken._

Kaito paused, and re-ran the thought through his mind.

 _Compass._ Lodestone. _Ohcrapcrapcrap, the Shadow-Knower-Creature's riddles,_ this _was one of them—it knew we would get lost._

He raked his hands through his hair. _Focus. It didn't say we'd never get home afterward. We will, because we have to. I have to get Saguru-kun home, find Pandora, keep an eye on Kenta-kun and Riku-kun… not to mention turn Axel-kun back into a Somebody._

Kaito vaguely heard the door click as it opened. "Kuroba-kun, are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost. For the second time in as many days, I might add."

He raised a hand palm outward without looking up, instead continuing to stare past the far side of the room as he chased after his train of thought. "Quiet. Thinking."

The door closed again without comment.

… _Maybe Axel was what It meant with 'change things the same'. But no, it said time factored in somewhere, and dealing with Axel-kun isn't on a time limit. I'm not going to bring him back just to leave him the way he was, either._ Kaito growled under his breath. _Coming back to both of those ideas later._

A sudden sense of frustrated presence in the back of Kaito's mind made him pause. "Méraud? You've been quiet…"

 _:I've had more important things to focus on than providing you with a running commentary.:_ Méraud replied dryly. _:Dark Sage and I and a few others have been studying the Shadow-thread I told you about earlier.:_

"Do you know what it is?"

Méraud's hesitation smothered the last vestiges of Kaito's peace of mind. _:Not exactly. It's… tied to something, we think. We simply can't seem to discover what, or where… I can't even tell you if it's interfering at all with your ability to return home or not.:_

_Erk._

_I am not thinking near well enough these days, if I hadn't considered that already._

"But you think it _could_ be?" he asked, as Saguru settled nearby on the couch.

 _:Yes, it_ could _be,:_ Méraud mimicked, sounding oddly less like an ancient dragon and more like an older sister without any answers to the questions her siblings kept repeating. _:It could be nearly anything. However, even though there's no way to test for certain, I'm fairly convinced that it is… not benign.:_

"Why?" His voice came out surprisingly calm.

:The way it hurt you at its apparent inception... The whispers of Darkness around it.:

Kaito mentally turned the air a fine shade of blue, then took a deep breath. "Is there anything conclusive on that front?" _Or if it's linked to my nightmares?_ He couldn't bring himself to add the question aloud. "Can you do anything about it?"

A sense of a sigh. _:Of course there's nothing conclusive. Your first nightmare was before this, but the way they've gotten worse means we can't rule it out as being related. Nor can we rule out that it's influencing your path home, but we haven't found a way to do anything about it, either. The last thing we want to do is make whatever it is, worse.:_

 _So I don't really know anything except that it's bad. But if we don't know what it's doing... I don't have the mental resources to ruminate about what it_ could _be._

"If that's all we know, then my sanity will thank me to not think about it until I have something concrete to consider." He pulled his attention back to the real world, and found concern warring with amusement in Saguru's expression.

Saguru spoke once Kaito had turned to look at him. "If this weren't the age of wireless technology, watching you talk to yourself would be a great deal more disconcerting. What's wrong?"

"Do you want alphabetical or categorical?" Without waiting for an answer, Kaito continued, "I figured out that the thing we met in the wild Shadows predicted we'd get lost like this, and while we were there I picked up something that could be bad, but we don't know anything about it. So until Méraud can tell me anything for sure I'm not going to think about it, just keep doing what I'm doing to get us home and hope to Kami-sama that whatever gave me a headache in the wild Shadows _isn't_ behind this."

_And I am not thinking about whether my nightmares are of a real place. Not. Notnotnot._

He couldn't afford to have another breakdown, not until they were safely back home. Or rather, maybe they could find somewhere safe enough, but it would be damn well embarrassing and wouldn't exactly _help_.

Saguru had a doubtful look, which only deepened when Kaito gave him a careless grin. The blond knew him too well these days, catching on to most of his tells when he wasn't saying the whole story.

The silence of Kaito's too-bright smile suddenly broke with the sound of stumbling, hung over footsteps approaching the office.

In a response completely unbefitting of Kid, he panicked. Trying to explain their presence in the office to a growly Mouri Kogoro would go over very, _very_ badly in this universe, particularly when Kaito looked _just like Kudou._

 _-Time!-_ pulled from the Shadows, and the footsteps slowed to a near-standstill as Kaito scooped up the two bags— _no staff?_ —beside the couch to over one shoulder in a split second. Trusting instinct to guide what conscious control had yet to learn, he used the rest of that second to grab Saguru by the wrist and – _yank-_ him upright in defiance of inertia and acceleration.

As he did, Kaito couldn't help but wish a little that Kudou could have kept the insanity magnet.

_HomenowPLEASE!_

The mental summon opened the atom-thick doorway nearly a couch-width across, providing ample space to dive into the next reality with Saguru in tow. Unfortunately, the consequences of their improbable acceleration meant that as Kaito twisted to see when Saguru's feet cleared the opening and he could drop the Shadow's hold, he and Saguru weren't so much running forward as falling horizontally. The instant Kaito dropped the rift's Shadows, the others he'd been calling on disappeared as well, and the pair dropped onto carpet with a dull thud and enough velocity to give Kaito's bare arms carpet burn as they skidded to a halt.

"Ow. Gerrof." Kaito shoved at Saguru's larger frame—he'd twisted towards the detective to look back at their feet, and so had ended up half-pinned beneath Saguru's arm and torso.

The weight disappeared as Saguru withdrew, rising up to his elbows and then rolling off onto his back, eyes tightly shut. "I would sincerely appreciate a warning before you try something like that again, lest I lose breakfast on you next time."

"Bloody _hell_ ," a young, oddly familiar voice yelped behind them. "KUROBAAA!"

_Dammit!_

A Kuroba never despaired—it was hardwired right out of their DNA, mom always said—but Kaito felt himself flirting with the idea as he forced leaden limbs up to see what twisted new reality he'd landed them in this time.

Beside him, Saguru rapped out, "Language, Aidan," in a seemingly automatic response, before his eyes flew open with a curse of his own and he scrambled to sit up beside Kaito.

They'd landed in Kaito's bedroom, skidding from the inside wall to just in front of the bed. A boy with dyed brown hair and a shirt that declared, "I'm not a pessimist, I'm an optimist with experience," pressed backwards into the pillows piled against the wall corner, watching them with narrowed blue eyes. The facial structure was wrong to be Kudou, though, and a moment later the familiar speech pattern and Saguru's comment made everything click into place.

" _Hakuba_ - _kun_?" Kaito managed, incredulous.

Before the boy could reply, Kaito's perfect mirror image skidded into the doorway from the direction of the den. "What is i… Oh. Oh…kay…"

The apparently shrunk Hakuba Saguru picked back up the hardcover novel he'd dropped at their arrival, but held it in such a way that the closed book was more a blunt instrument than reading material. "Who are you, and how did you appear out of thin air?"

Kaito forced himself to not hit his head against the nearest hard surface. "I'm Kaito. That's Hakuba Saguru-kun. I can do more than just sleight of hand magic, and we're trying to get home from an accidental jaunt outside our reality but keep _missing_ …"

Hakuba tilted his head, curiosity showing through despite himself. "Alternate timelines?"

"I am _so_ glad you are actually intelligent." It made explanations much simpler, if not less repetitive. "Alternate realities, but close enough."

"Lovely." Kuroba rubbed his forehead, as if warding off a headache. "Look, I don't have timefor this right now. I have work to do tonight…"

"Fine." Saguru's eyes were glued to his youthened counterpart. "We can compare notes with—Hakuba-san—while you're off playing target."

Kaito rolled his eyes. "Hakuba-kun…"

"Yes, still slightly annoyed with you about that. If you'd run out of luck…"

Hakuba shrugged before Kaito could retort. "It's not as if he has to worry about anyone but Inspector Nakamori."

"Unless I find the stupid thing," Kuroba added, pausing in the doorway. "Then all bets are off."

Kaito raised an eyebrow. "No occasional sniper?"

Kuroba glanced at Hakuba. "Go finish up," Hakuba waved a hand, "or you'll be late. We can catch you up later."

"Going, going…" Kuroba ducked into the hall, padding towards the den and Touichi's painting.

Once Kuroba was gone, Hakuba re-arranged his legs to sit cross-legged, apparently satisfied that Kaito and Saguru weren't enough of a threat that he needed to be prepared to dodge.

"Well. It's still close to an hour before the heist time, so we can talk." Hakuba gave Saguru a sidelong glance. "…You said the name Aidan earlier. Judging by the context and my current appearance… you have a younger brother?"

Saguru hesitated, eyes closing, but the bittersweet smile that crept inexorably onto his face was all the answer Hakuba would have needed. "Yes. Just… the one. Do you?"

"No… I'm an only child. What's his name?"

"Aidan. Akira, if he were to ever visit Japan, but… Aidan. He's eight. He's a raging computer geek and takes to mathematics like a fish to water. I suspect he has Asperger's syndrome, but Grandmother would have conniptions if I ever tried to have him officially diagnosed."

Hakuba's lips thinned. "Of course. Atypical neurology is something that happens to _other_ people."

"We have too many good genes," Saguru agreed, tone dry.

Kaito listened quietly. He'd known about Saguru's family, of course—there was a reason why the Kid Task Force called him their friendly neighborhood stalker, and the existence of a semi-high society and monied British clan was hardly a close-kept secret—but he'd never heard Saguru's perspective before.

Said blond now gave him a wry smile. "I missed more than one heist because Aidan would ask me to visit. It's difficult to deny him a trip home and next to impossible to then drop everything to return halfway around the world on short notice. He could hardly visit Japan, either, because he's enough of a trouble magnet that I'm positive he would cross paths with Edogawa-kun—someone you wouldn't know, I expect, Saguru-san, but dead bodies tend to crop up around him—and I'm not ready for Aidan to know what a corpse looks like yet."

Hakuba replied, "I'll take your word for it, and I wouldn't either. Given that you came after Kid, I presume you also prefer missing persons and thefts to murder... I saw my first corpse at twelve, a complete accident unrelated to my initial forays as a detective. I can handle one, but I won't go looking."

It was only thanks to Kaito's experience facing off against Conan that hearing a grade-schooler reference being a teenager was not more disconcerting. Glancing at Saguru's face, he saw no surprise at the statement, only a pale melancholy, and let himself wince a little that the blond had seen death so young. Kaito wouldn't wish that loss of innocence on anyone else.

Saguru nodded. "Yes. One of the advantages of working in the private sector, rather than public service. Civilians don't hire detectives to review murder scenes in person."

Hakuba smirked faintly. "All you have to do is avoid being throttled by the jilted lovers and jealous spouses."

"I never said the cases were any _easier,_ nor without their own dangers… But the mundane I can handle, at least." Saguru sighed and looked down, voice softening. "Aidan thinks I'm gone on a case. I don't know if it really sunk in when I said I would be entirely out of contact for the duration... he's too accustomed to a weekly phone call. Let alone when or if we'll make it back at all."

_I knew better than to use Aidan-kun against you when trying to convince you to go back home, Saguru-kun. Don't make me regret that._

Particularly not when a squished, niggling part of his conscience suspected that if Hakuba hadn't been there at DiZ's suicide, Kaito would have overreached his capabilities with fairly messy consequences.

"You'll make it home." Kaito joined Saguru in raising an eyebrow at the confidence in Hakuba's young voice, and the blond grinned a little. "In a contest of wills between Kuroba and the universe at large, I fully expect Kuroba to come out the victor."

Saguru chuckled. "Against all sense, I have to agree with you."

"You flatter me." Kaito smirked. "And insult me, too, but that's nothing new. Thanks for the backhanded vote of confidence."

"Kuroba-kun, I expect the labyrinthine ways of your mind to not recognize a compliment unless delivered in a similarly twisted fashion."

"Sad, but true," Hakuba agreed. "And said mind is given to undertaking the most insane projects when Kuroba's bored. It's a pity that he hasn't managed to finish his sonic screwdriver prototype yet, or I'd offer to try giving you a universal roaming phone."

Saguru chuffed. "Given the slippery nature of time and space, it might be better to avoid a method of communication tied to my personal timeline even if it were possible. Though we do seem to be going primarily across time, not up and down it."

"Geeks," Kaito complained half-heartedly. "Yeesh."

"Says the man who references cult American movies and heaven knows what else."

"American popular culture is different." Kaito grinned. "But did I ever show you my registered silly walk?" He ducked the thwap aimed for the back of his head. "Now we see the violence inherent in the system!"

As one, Saguru and Hakuba covered their face with a hand and groaned. "Whoever gave you access to the internet," Saguru griped, "should be shot."

"That would be me, and been there, done that, got the scar... Oops." Kaito leaned away from tandem glares. "Did you not know that already?"

" _No,_ " Saguru intoned.

Maybe it was the way Saguru's voice had frosted over, like when they'd argued in Solomon's study, but Kaito felt obliged to give a real answer rather than a glib dismissal. "Snake—the bastard who killed dad—thinks that he's still Kid, and seems compelled to finish the job. He's managed to wing me." _Twice, and also would have shredded my heart once if not for the suit's inside breast pocket being the perfect place to carry the Blue Birthday, but let's not mention that._ "Seeing as Snake went after the Kid we just left behind as well, he must be a universal nemesis or something."

"Not here." Hakuba's quiet declaration interrupted any response of Saguru's. When they both turned back to look at him, he elaborated, "He's dead."

"What? How?"

Hakuba shifted. "His body was dumped in a warehouse a few months back with an 'apology for Kid's loss.'" The last phrase held a turn of vicious sarcasm.

Kaito hissed through is teeth. "A note? Was it signed?" If Vermouth—Sharon—was the type of person that Kudou had described and Kaito had vague false-memories of, then she would be the best candidate for that type of stunt.

"A note, yes, but not signed. We have yet to identify the instigator, but since then, there have been no attacks on Kid." Hakuba paused, then pulled out a very familiar-looking pocket watch from his jeans and flipped it open. "It's almost time. If you don't mind, we can continue talking after Kuroba is on his way home…"

"Sure." It wouldn't hurt to postpone learning exactly how Hakuba had run afoul of Kudou's drug, and Kuroba ought to be home before Vermouth entered the conversation in any way, shape, or form. Kaito was still trying to process that one himself, let alone broach the idea to anyone else—alternate reality counterpart or not.

As they relocated to the den, Hakuba paused in the doorway. "Forgive me, living with Kuroba seems to be eroding my manners. Can I offer you both anything to eat or drink?"

"I'm fine, thank you. Kuroba-kun?"

"Tell you what—I'll forage for something myself, so you don't risk missing any of the heist." He waved off Hakuba's protest of etiquette. "Either I've already seen it, or I'll think of it myself soon enough."

"When you put it like that… very well."

Kaito padded out to the kitchen and gathered a second breakfast, snacking from the bowl as he headed back down the hallway. He'd just reached the doorway when he heard Saguru's voice ask, with deceptive casualness, "This may sound a bit odd, but have you ever heard of 'Nightmare'?"

"International… well, assistant to various thieves. Wanted by the ICPO… Oh, blast," Hakuba cursed, as Kaito caught sight of the museum that had hosted four of his heists, including the disastrous ruby from last month, on the TV screen. "It's starting to rain. He's going to have a problem with the glider, and the neighborhood around the museum is maze."

Kaito's bowl smashed on the carpet before he noticed that he'd dropped it. "Oh, Kami-sama…"

Both detectives whipped around at the sound of broken ceramic, and Saguru was suddenly at his side without Kaito having processed how he'd gotten there, tugging on his elbow. "You. Sit."

Kaito obligingly sidled past the shards of broken bowl and sat on the low-backed couch, eyes glued to the TV. Saguru sat backwards on the corner where the back turned into the arm, facing Hakuba.

"What's wrong?" Hakuba asked, even as he picked up the mess Kaito'd made of the den floor.

Saguru ignored the question for the moment. "Kuroba-kun, is there any way to stop him without endangering…" The blond trailed off. He still didn't know Jii's identity, Kaito realized numbly, just that Nightmare had threatened _someone_.

"Don't know."

" _What_ are you _talking_ about?" Hakuba demanded, louder.

"I'm not certain how this works, but we've already experienced these events. And the ramifications…" Saguru swore under his breath, and added more to himself than to either of them, "It's impossible to say if it would be better or worse to try changing anything."

"I'm still _here_ , you know," Hakuba growled, aggrieved tone sounding oddly like Conan.

Saguru sighed heavily. "Somehow, possibly because of the events that made you small, this heist is occurring further along your personal timelines than it did in ours. We've already lived through this… and it wasn't pretty by the time it was over."

"…Tell me."

Saguru pinched the bridge of his nose. "I never got all the details from this idiot, but… Kuroba-kun was blackmailed into a heist by Nightmare to protect his assistant's identity from the police."

"Oh, _hell_."

"It gets worse."

"Of course it does. It's Kuroba."

"Mmm. By the end…" As Saguru hesitated, Kaito's legs moved up onto the couch while he continued to stare through the TV. "…Nightmare was dead. Fell out of Kid's hand into a multi-story drop."

Hakuba's immediate response was unprintable. "He didn't take that well, I'm sure."

"I was confronted by a half-hysterical thief at 4 AM after he'd dreamed of murdering me." Saguru's gloved hand slipped onto Kaito's shoulder, a faint but grounding pressure. "It was the catalyst to move us beyond fox and hound, but that's about the only good to find in the entire mess."

"Lovely. If this is the heist where they make contact, he's already watching Kid," Hakuba mused aloud. "Calling him back here won't do any good."

"It might make things worse, yes. That's the bloody problem. If Nightmare's alive, he's going to be a threat."

"…The last person to threaten Kid didn't stay alive. This one might meet the same fate."

_That does not make me feel better!_

"He has a little boy," Kaito whispered. "Five, maybe six. Mom's dead. The kid was willing to hide overnight in a toilet just to see his dad for a few minutes. Needs neurosurgery… supposedly why the man worked with thieves at all."

Saguru's hand tightened, just a little.

Hakuba moved behind Kaito, ceramic scraping. "We'll figure things out once we're absolutely certain that we're paralleling in this. After all, it _is_ possible that this is a point of divergence between us."

"True enough," Saguru agreed, and stood. "Why don't you let us clean the rest of that up while you keep an eye on the heist."

Kaito forced his thoughts out of their horrified stupor. Better to believe in the chance than the alternative, and scrubbing the floor would be a nicely mindless task to focus on for a while.

"If you're sure…" Hakuba demurred, but even a rock would be able to tell that he wanted to trade places with Kaito. Kaito stood.

"I made the mess; it's only fair I clean it." He relieved Hakuba's small hands of the bowl fragments.

As he settled onto the couch, Hakuba replied wryly, "If only that rule applied to pranks and Kid heists."

A tiny smile quirked Kaito lips. "Didn't you know? Pranks and heists were both designed to break every rule in the book, and then point and laugh at the writers."

"And those who abide by them," Saguru added.

"Duh."

He needed more humor, Kaito decided as both detectives chuckled and he led the way to the cupboard of cleaning supplies. It was the best way to stay sane.

* * *

By the time Kaito and Saguru had cleaned up the carpet, and Kaito had eaten a real second breakfast, the heist was over. Kid had escaped, and the journalists were trying to mob the nearest hapless police officer for an interview.

"That's odd," Saguru muttered, eyeing the TV.

"What is?" Hakuba asked.

"I would have expected Kudou-kun to have been chasing Kid at the heist, given your circumstances, and he's a better interview candidate than the police."

"Who?" The honest bewilderment in Hakuba's voice was disturbing.

"Kudou Shinichi-kun. Detective…"

After a moment, Hakuba ventured, "You mean the novelist's son? He disappeared three years ago."

"Three _years?_ " Kaito parroted, stunned.

"Yes… on a trip to New York. It was all over the news for a while, what with who his parents are."

_No Savior of the Japanese Police. No Edogawa Conan. How many cases never were solved?_

… _How many people got away with murder?_

"What did you mean, 'given my circumstances'?" Hakuba added, glancing at Saguru. "Where you're from, did he catch the eye of the Syndicate after Kid rather than me? …Or rather, you."

"Yes, though through a different avenue. For him to have simply disappeared is… very odd."

 _She knew him_ , the traitorous thought whispered before Kaito could squelch it. _She knew his parents, and she was working in New York around then. What if she decided she wanted a detective's blood rather than a thief's?_

Kaito quickly shoved the thought into a four-layer lockbox and threw away the key. It didn't try to resurface, but that was helped by the distraction of Touichi's portrait turning. In a sort of horrible out-of-body déjà vu, Kaito watched Kid stumble through the portrait, sans hat and monocle and face nearly grey.

Kuroba swayed once as he took in the three of them, and then swooped down on Hakuba like an eagle on a rabbit—if eagles plucked up their prey into a tight hug, heedless of any surprised squawks, and sank to the floor with Kid's cape wrapping around them both like a protective barrier.

"Kuroba, what on earth…"

"Shut up," Kuroba rasped, with a shudder. Sheer surprise seemed to keep Hakuba quiet for the next few moments, until Kuroba finally pulled back enough to see the blond's face. "I keep telling you, you have to be more _careful!_ "

_Wait, what?_

"Oh, hell," Saguru murmured.

"I have been! What happened?" Hakuba demanded.

"You got _FOUND OUT_ , you idiot!"

Kaito's stomach plummeted, feeling the situation spin completely out of what little semblance of control he'd been holding onto.

"What?" Hakuba had gone dead white. "Who— _How?"_

"This psycho by the name of—"

"Nightmare," Saguru supplied, causing Kuroba to startle and look up.

"How did you…?"

"Met him," Kaito replied, dully. "Watched him die."

"…Oh boy."

"What did Nightmare say this time?" Saguru asked.

"He said…" Beneath the cape, Kuroba's arms visibly tightened around Hakuba. "That it was an amazing coincidence how Hakuba Saguru mysteriously vanished, and then the spitting image of Inspector Hakuba and Elizabeth Harcourt's only child appeared in the audience of Jody Hopper's magic show, sporting brown hair and avoiding news camera lenses like the plague."

"Bloody hell. He's an ICPO agent—at least he was for us. Jack Connery." Saguru glanced at Hakuba. "Perhaps he met you when you were this age the first time around."

"Doesn't matter _why_ he recognized Hakuba," Kuroba snapped, voice tight. "He wants me to steal for him. Or he'll out Hakuba's identity. And even if _no one else_ believes it…"

"They won't care," Hakuba finished, voice pale. "I'll be a dead man, and likely you and Mizuki-obasan with me."

There was grim silence for a moment, before Hakuba added, a touch wryly, "Kuroba, you're rather effectively blocking the blood flow to my arms."

"Gah!" Kaito full-body twitched, seeing Saguru mirror the action from the corner of his eye.

The blond ran a gloved hand through his hair. "That's rather more déjà vu than I'm comfortable with, considering what our points of variance are."

"It doesn't matter." At the resignation in Kuroba's voice, Kaito closed his eyes, remembering the helplessness he'd felt when it had been him in Kid's shoes. "I can't take the chance that the bastard will do it… the heist will be tomorrow night."

"Damn. Sooner than ours was," Saguru mused. "He must not want to give you a chance to think of anything."

Kaito's hands clenched, nails digging into his palms. The thought of Kid being used and then disposed of by Nightmare set his teeth on edge. These were _his_ people; you didn't threaten them, ever… "And what happens afterward? If Nightmare doesn't kill you when it's over, do you let him use you for another heist, and another, until he decides you're not an asset anymore?"

Kuroba growled at him, a full-throated noise that caused both Sagurus to startle slightly. Kaito would have as well, except he could and had done the same thing himself on multiple occasions. "I don't _know_ , and you're not helping. I've got to find some way to take him down, but…"

"But jail may not be far enough. Not with what he knows, what he could do..."

_Not again. Not again…_

"…I don't want him dead," Kuroba confirmed. "I can't be responsible for that. I just…"

The threat that Nightmare could still pose to Kid and Hakuba, even incarcerated, was too great to ignore.

"You may not have to," Hakuba murmured, "given what happened to Snake. But I know you won't like that any better."

"Damn straight."

_She knew him…_

Kaito swallowed. "You said there was a note. Is it… do you have a copy of it?"

_Just to be sure. Just to know it's not…_

"Kuroba-kun…" Saguru was giving him a worried look. The blond was too damn quick, if he was already figuring out what Kaito was concerned about. Kaito ignored him, fingers curled into the back of the couch as he leaned against it.

"Yes, I have a photograph," Hakuba allowed. "Why?"

"Peace of mind. I want to check something."

Hakuba and Kuroba exchanged a glance, and then Kuroba relinquished his hold with only a bit of reluctance. "You can get it. I need to change."

"Right." Hakuba squeezed Kuroba's wrist briefly, then headed out of the den. Kuroba stayed on the carpet for a moment longer before levering upright and disappearing behind the portrait again.

"Fascinating…"

Kaito glanced over. Saguru's eyes raked across the revolving portrait as he shifted, trying to see beyond the threshold. "Oh. Right. You haven't seen it."

"No. I… always speculated, but… well." Saguru shrugged.

"Tell you what. When we get back, I'll give you a tour before you head home."

Saguru smiled, a bit crookedly. "I think I would like that. Thank you."

Kaito nodded. One more reason to make it home. One more thing to hold on to, while everything else went crazy.

Hakuba returned with photograph in hand just as Kuroba reappeared through the portrait. "Here…"

Kaito took the photo carefully and turned it right side up to read the contents of the note. A moment later, it fluttered to the floor as he dropped it in sheer, utter horror. "Kami-sama…"

 _It's him. She knew him, and she_ _**stole** _ _him... Invert and ossify and hollow out, until all that's left is a puppet hanging from strings..._

Kaito swallowed hard against rising nausea as Saguru retrieved the photo from the floor and read the note's handful of kanji. "You're sure, Kuroba-kun?"

"I've forged it a time or two." A bubble of half-hysterical laughter leaked out against his will. "I wished he could have kept the weirdness magnet, just before we came."

"He, who?" Kuroba demanded, a hand on Hakuba's shoulder.

"Kudou Shinichi." As Hakuba's eyes went wide with realization, Kaito continued, "You met… No, wait, you wouldn't have. He would never have been at the Clock Tower."

_So many heists went differently. All the Suzuki challenges, to play with Kudou and keep us both sane against murder and snipers and failure… did they ever happen? Or Sunset Mansion, or the Magic Lover's Club…_

"The novelist's son who disappeared?"

Kaito forced himself to refocus. "Yeah. Where we're from, Kudou Shinichi was a well-known high school detective. Brilliant at poking his nose where it didn't belong."

"Hence getting…" Hakuba gestured at himself.

Kaito nodded. "It's called Apotoxin. There aren't a lot of records on it, even where we're from…" He closed his eyes, fists clenching again as he forced his voice to stay steady. "Hakuba-kun. I can't—leave him here. Not with them."

_No matter what it costs me._

"I know," Saguru answered quietly.

"Something else we don't know about?" Kuroba inquired.

"We've…" Saguru paused, and looked at Kaito. "Do you want to talk about this?"

_No._

"I—We've seen something like this before. Just… don't ask for details." Saguru's hand was on his shoulder again. "Kudou Shinichi wasn't—isn't—he's not an assassin. Something's gone wrong."

"I think it's safe to call that an understatement," Hakuba said, voice dry.

"Of the millennium. I just need to _think_ …" Kaito's hands strayed toward the card case clipped to his jeans. There had to be something in there that he could use. Something to break Vermouth's rules—Connery's rules—all of it.

"I'll leave that to you," Kuroba said. "I have to get ready for tomorrow."

"Let us help? We can't predict if this will echo at all, but the more minds are tackling this, the better chance there is to not miss anything." Unless Kuroba survived tomorrow, everything Kaito wanted for Kudou would be superfluous.

Kuroba smiled wryly. "I've wondered what it would be like to collaborate with myself. Okay… I hope you don't plan on sleeping for a while."

"Give me hot chocolate and I'll be fine."

Hakuba rolled his eyes. "Does yours overdose on chocolate too?"

"I've never seen it," Saguru replied, "but I've heard stories about the Valentine's Day he was ordered to clear his desk of chocolate. The level of confetti was legendary, even after he made it back down off the ceiling."

Despite the situation, Kaito grinned reminiscently. "That was a good day."

"It was," Kuroba agreed with a matching grin, then sobered. "Come on, then. Let's get started."


	5. Joker to King's Black Knight; Checkmate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to RandomImagination for beta. Except in spoken dialogue, first names refer to the traveling Kaito and Saguru. Last names refer to the natives of the current reality.

_If all time is eternally present_  
 _All time is unredeemable._  
\- Burnt Norton (I.4-5)

* * *

Four hours later, the theory of the heist's execution and various contingency plans had been hammered into completion. The main problem with Nightmare's choice of leverage was that any attempt to disprove Hakuba's shrunken status would require alerting the public, and consequently the Syndicate, that the detective was not as dead as he should be. Saguru had pointed out that so long as Hakuba stayed small until the Syndicate was gone, the knowledge would be useless, but Kaito and Kuroba both firmly maintained that it was a completely unacceptable option. Saguru showing up at the Kid heist was just asking to be shot, possibly by Kudou.

As the only alternative, Kaito had promised to find something among his cards that would neutralize the threat while Kuroba took care of the heist itself. With the final issue defined, if not resolved, Kuroba and Hakuba had moved into the Kid lair to bring the preparations into reality, while Kaito and Saguru had stayed in the den to consider the twin problems of Nightmare and Kudou's fates.

Kaito, still functioning after his adrenaline-fueled Shadowrip by virtue of pocky and hot chocolate, spread out his current arsenal of Duel Cards (Duel Deck, side deck, and Saguru's Duel Deck sans the ichthyic monsters) on the floor with Saguru's assistance, and stared at them.

Even if he managed a nap— _Hah_ —without a focus he wouldn't be able to use the Shadows for anything but blunt force and travel. The only focuses he had were the fifty-odd slips of cardboard lying innocuously on the carpet. Ergo, there had to be something in this mess he could use or adapt to eliminate Nightmare's threat and recover Kudou from whatever living hell Vermouth had trapped him in.

Saguru sat beside him, occasionally picking up a card, reading the text, and then replacing it. He failed to make any suggestions, and Kaito couldn't blame him. Kaito's decks had been put together with the intention of taking on Heartless, not humans, and Saguru's deck had been built mainly to rag on Kaito's phobia.

After several minutes thought, Kaito picked up Change of Heart. Yugi had talked about multiple personalities and ghost possession, but it didn't have to be restricted to just that. Kudou wasn't himself; Kaito was removing whatever Vermouth had done to make him that way. Simple.

_Even if I can't afford to pretend it'll be easy._

"This one is for Kudou-kun," he murmured. "Reversing what Vermouth's done to his mind. But I'll need to be close, and there's no way I can take care of Nightmare and Kudou both, and still transport us there and back. I'll be lucky to manage _one_ Shadowrift, period."

"Then given our track record of things going according to plan, we should keep that as an emergency backup. Public transport should be sufficient to get us there, and I have the cash for a taxi if we need a more private and swift exit from the site of Nightmare and Kid's meeting."

"Mmm. Two brothers and a friend, and one's had too much to drink."

"Precisely."

Kaito sighed. "That just leaves what to do with Nightmare."

"We'll think of something."

"…I hope so." Kaito returned to staring blankly at the cards. He wasn't keeping track of time, but after a good long while of fruitless contemplation he was startled out of a catnap when Saguru flicked the side of his head with a finger.

"You're not doing yourself any favors pushing like this—it's only going to make you useless by tonight. Take the couch. I'll wake you in twenty minutes or if I see signs of a nightmare."

"I…"

"Twenty minutes," Saguru repeated, quietly unyielding. "I'll wake you up."

"…Fine." Kaito rolled his eyes. "Mother hen."

"Cluck cluck." Saguru deadpanned.

With a snort, Kaito relocated to the couch. "Wiseass."

"That's wise _arse_. Or in your case, wise-'alse'."

"Other way around, moron." Kaito chucked a throw pillow at Saguru's head and rolled over, closing his eyes. The blond was still snickering under his breath when he fell asleep.

Something poked him in the ribs. "Kuroba-kun, wake up."

"Mmph." Kaito pulled his face out of the couch corner and sat up, blinking. The powernap had left him feeling more alert than he'd been for days. "Hi."

"Good morning." Saguru held up a card between two fingers. "I had a thought while you were out."

Kaito tried to read the card title, but it was angled wrong. "I'm listening."

"Ignoring the game mechanics, I read solely the titles, and found this." Saguru handed over the card, which turned out to be Malice Dispersion. "You won't use Mind Crush, I know—with a name like that, it's asking to turn a person into a human vegetable. I'm trying to not think too hard about the ethics of this, either, but… if Nightmare could be changed to no longer think of thieves as tools to fund Kenta's surgery…"

" _Discard all face-up continuous trap cards." Twist it enough to apply it to Connery's methods—he's trapped Kid and isn't hiding it—and let the Shadows take care of the details…_

It was tempting. VERY tempting.

Especially when the cards meant he would be calling on the tamer Shadows, not the wild Shadows. The Shadows were pitiless, but they weren't inherently cruel. And Kaito would be channeling how he wanted Connery still alive, and capable of taking care of Kenta if not arrested…

He felt Kid's not-entirely-pleasant smirk spreading across his face. "I think I can live with this."

"Well. Good." Saguru looked slightly uncomfortable, but resigned. "If that's taken care of, we ought to get out of the house before too much longer. Kuroba-san's mother gets home from work soon, and I don't care to spend the next eight hours inside Kid's lair."

"You'll need a disguise."

"Given the company I'm in, that seems to be the _least_ of my concerns."

"Point. Let me get you a hat and glasses." Kaito ducked into the Kid lair for a moment and swiped a baseball cap. The glasses he supplied from his own bag, and he adjusted his appearance to a more generically Asian face as Saguru gave the cap a look of cultured disdain.

"A Hanshin Tigers cap."

"Exactly. No one in their right mind would believe you'd wear it."

"Not in _my_ right mind," Saguru grumbled, but without much ire.

"Your point?"

Saguru sighed. "At least I can take comfort in knowing that no one will believe the photographs are truly of me."

"You think I'd take photographs?" Kaito's innocent look had charmed furious kendo mistresses before. Saguru, sadly, appeared immune.

"I _know_ you'll take photographs. The only question is how many, knowing that you'll profit nothing from them."

"No comment." Kaito swept up the Duel Cards and returned Saguru's Deck. "Come on, I smell food. We can tell Kuroba the relatively good news and that we'll see him at or after the heist."

They found Kuroba and Hakuba in the kitchen, and confirmed the plan for Kaito and Saguru to kill time leading up to the heist in the city on their own and then return when the heist was over to compare notes on the final outcome.

"Which—knock on wood —" Hakuba added, "will have a positive conclusion all around."

Kaito nodded. "Break a leg, Kid-kun."

"You, too."

Kaito and Saguru left, and not a moment too soon. At the first street intersection they reached, Kaito looked back over his shoulder to see Mizuki disembarking from a bus stop down the block. He casually strolled around the corner, Saguru trailing without comment.

"Park?" Kaito suggested. "If we're going to kill time, I'd rather be in the sun."

"Good enough, at least until we're hungry."

Kaito led the way to the small park on the edge of the river running behind Kaito and Aoko's neighborhood. Grass surrounded a set of playground equipment, then gave way to street and houses on three sides and steeply sloped to meet the raised walk-path beside the water on the fourth. They settled on the grassy incline, Kaito sitting upright while Saguru stretched out with his pack as a pillow.

In deference to the spring warmth, the blond wore his short-sleeve polo without gloves, but kept the sunglasses. Which meant there was one thing missing…

"Hey, Hakuba-kun… did I leave your staff behind at the agency?"

To Kaito's relief, Saguru smiled. "No, they made it more easily portable while you were out."

"Okay, this I have to see."

Saguru obligingly retrieved the implement from the coat in his bag, and demonstrated the changes, at which Kaito was suitably impressed.

"It's rather a relief," Saguru admitted as he tucked it back away. "I mean, it's already presumable that I'm insane for being in your company voluntarily, but I hardly need to add to the image."

Kaito grinned. "Join the Dark Side, we have chocolate."

"…It's rather harder to appreciate the joke when we've seen real Darksiders."

"Point." Kaito shuddered.

"Mmm."

When Saguru seemed disinclined to say anything else, Kaito let the topic die. He pulled out a deck of cards to shuffle and practice with, letting the concentration necessary to do a trick correctly crowd out any other thoughts. Saguru alternately read a book he'd pulled out of his bag and let it drop against his chest while he soaked up the sun not unlike a large cat.

Kaito had finished running through all of his card tricks and moved onto conjuring roses when his stomach lodged a protest in the form of a dull roar. Saguru lowered his book to give him a look of amusement, before an answering growl on his part turned the expression into one of mild chagrin.

"Lunch?"

"Lunch."

Mutual agreement took them to the mall, where food was a balance between affordable and edible. After eating, they were on their way toward an exit when Saguru paused outside of a game store, eyes drawn to one of the chessboards in the window display.

"You gonna go in?" Kaito asked after a moment.

"Would you mind? I had a thought…"

"Not like we have anything better to do. I'll be over that way." Kaito waved at the electronics store two places down, since he'd already been debating whether or not to make an excuse to stop inside. Saguru raised an eyebrow, but then simply shrugged.

"I'll meet you there."

They split up and Kaito entered the store, heading past cell phones, computers, and other gadgets to the back corner where speaker systems shared floor space with the electric keyboards. Finding one with a full set of keys, he turned the volume on low and began to play.

Music had never been an obsession, like magic and acrobatics, but Kaito had enjoyed the lessons as a kid. In the aftermath of Touichi's death, when gymnastics coaching had been necessarily dropped as unaffordable, his piano teacher's offer of pro bono lessons for six months until Mizuki could find her feet had left the woman with an extremely enthusiastic student. Until he'd figured out how to keep up gymnastics on his own, music had been one of the only ways where he could, even temporarily, just forget and _be._

Discovering that classical music played at speed was an excellent way to keep fingers coordinated for legerdemain had been a bonus. Right now, however, he valued _Fantasie Impromptu_ for being so intricate and rapidly paced that even after a few minutes warm-up it still took all his concentration to play it.

As the piece sped to a close, Kaito noticed that he'd gained a small audience despite the low volume: a store hand, a few shoppers, and Saguru hanging back behind the others. Finishing with a flourish, he grinned and took an elaborate bow to the polite round of applause. As the shoppers dispersed, the store hand, Touda, smiled at Kaito.

"Did your keyboard break again, that you come back to entertain us?"

Kaito's grin widened at the confirmation of his other self's similar hobby. "Nah, I was passing by and thought I'd stop in. Instruments get lonely if no one plays them, you know."

"So they do. You're still welcome to come back any time; live music is so rarely played well." The young man winked. "As for next time, let more people hear, ne? Maybe they'll buy if they realize how excellent our product sounds."

"I'll keep that in mind," Kaito laughed. Back home, when he'd been fifteen and shopping around for a new keyboard because his old one had died, somebody _had_. "I can't stay this time, Touda-san, but it's good to see you. I'll come back before too long."

"Come on a Wednesday. Machi-kun misses when you would come more often."

"I'll try. I'm a lot busier than I used to be."

"Ah, high school. I remember those days."

Kaito smirked. "You have no idea."

A customer caught Touda's attention before he could reply and he reluctantly excused himself, leaving Kaito with Saguru.

_Who's watching me like I'm a dove that suddenly started singing show tunes._

… _Not a bad idea…_

"You know," Saguru said softly, hands in his pockets, "every time I think I know you, you conjure something new out of thin air and I'm left wondering how you manage it all."

"I'm a man of mystery." The lines around Saguru's eyes tightened, and Kaito sobered. Baiting the detective with a flippant answer hadn't been his intention when he'd sought out the keyboard, but old habits died hard. "In all seriousness? Barring Aoko, I didn't have friends, Hakuba-kun. I'm the nail that sticks up and absolutely refuses to be hammered down, and it didn't make me popular outside of everyone and their girlfriend wanting me in their clubs so that they could use me to win."

"I… see."

"So yeah, people know me, but not outside school. Everything you see me do is because I had lot of time to practice on my own, from elementary school on up." Kaito shrugged. "I figured… this sort of makes us even for the violin performance."

A pause. "You had no obligation…"

"I know," Kaito replied simply.

"…Oh."

Kaito waited a moment, then asked, "What did you buy?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes…" Saguru reached into his bag and retrieved a small traveler's chess set—not expensive by any means, but good enough to play with. "It came to my attention at the Motou's that we both play, but have yet to match our skills over the board."

"You want to lose that badly?" Kaito smirked.

Saguru smirked back. "I'll gladly see if your chess skills exceed your dueling ones."

"That's it—you're going down."

* * *

The chess set kept them entertained for the rest of the day. After claiming one victory apiece, they grabbed an early dinner to take along to the warehouse Nightmare had set as the meeting spot. They kept playing after the relocation and had made fair progress on a game favoring Saguru again when Kaito's watch beeped with the heist time.

"And the show begins," Saguru murmured.

"Mmm." Slipping into Kid's focus automatically, Kaito stopped bouncing a knee as he contemplated the chessboard. He glanced down from their catwalk stakeout perch towards the warehouse entrance. Heists tended to be short if you didn't count that wait beforehand. If his own heist was anything to go by, Nightmare—Connery—would arrive in less than half an hour.

Saguru had pulled out a notebook and made a short record of the piece positions in chess notation, then glanced up at Kaito as he tucked it away. "It's mildly terrifying, the way you do that."

Kaito—Kid—didn't blink. "Do what?"

"Changing mindsets—or perhaps you think of them as roles?—as easily as flipping a switch. Few people compartmentalize so well."

He shrugged, not really having an answer. He tended to not look too closely at the things that let him be a good actor, entertainer, Kid – especially when he suspected that he might not like what he would find if he did. It was easier not to look the gift horse in the mouth.

Saguru didn't pry further, choosing instead to don his bronze-threaded gloves, which he'd worn for the climb up to their perch before removing them to play chess. Kaito did the same with his pair of Kid's white ones and they fell silent again, waiting together. Thankfully, Kaito reflected as he idly flipped his card case between his fingers, the blond was Kid's equal when it came to patience.

Just over twenty minutes later, a silhouette filled the warehouse entrance. In time with the click of dress shoes on concrete, Kaito dealt out the top five cards from his side deck, a proper hand. He'd pulled straight from the deck before, but this felt… different. A real duel, against a human, and the shape of the rules was different. Kid had survived this long by knowing how to ride the currents of a situation—any good stage performer knew how to play the audience—so Kaito simply went with it and glanced at the hand. Malice Dispersion and Change of Heart were first, since he had placed them on the top of the deck earlier that day, followed by three other cards.

The clip of Connery's shoes had almost reached the ladder to their catwalk. Even without recognizing the sound of Oxfords on concrete, Kaito would have known the man by his presence. Kid's custom of going with the flow of a heist, unconscious signals heard and obeyed, definitely relied upon the Shadows, and the Shadows' tendency to taste and feel and _know_ the people in their domain. Beside him, Saguru reached Kid's showman-sense as _detective-rival-friend_ ; below them both, Connery lurked in an acid-sharp sense of danger and arrogant disgust.

His lip curled unconsciously in a silent snarl. It was easier to be angry than to dwell on the twisted concoction of loathing and desperation that the man still managed to rouse. Knowing that Jii would be ruined or dead if Kaito didn't roll over and bare Kid's metaphorical throat to Nightmare was a memory he preferred to forget. The helplessness he'd experienced then had matched, far too closely, the sensation he'd felt when his world had imploded in a flash of light and smoke. Watching his mother rebuild herself from the ashes, one day at a time, he'd found that she worried less over Clown Face's smile than Poker Face's stoicism. He'd resolved to make his Poker Face a smile and to never, ever, feel that way again.

Nightmare had been the first to make him to renege on that.

Saguru, Méraud, and Riku had pretty firmly knocked out his guilt over the first Nightmare's death. That man had made his choices. But this one… he wasn't going to let die a man he _could_ save, especially if their suspicions of Kudou were right and stopping Nightmare now meant one less body on the other teen's conscience. It still didn't stop him from wishing that the man had never come to Japan, never made Kaito have to choose between either justice for a murderer or maintaining Kenta's innocent faith in his father. _Twice._

Yet if he had the same resources and faced the same situation a hundred more times, Kaito knew what he would choose.

_Discard one card…_

Kaito tossed Dian Keto back into his card case and held up the first card of the evening between two fingers.

"Malice Dispersion."

The warehouse exploded with blue light as the card took effect, bright enough to be seen from the museum if his estimates were right. Kaito tried not to think about it and focused on guiding the Shadows instead, letting them work on Nightmare with minimal interference on his part.

_The fine art of delegation—you don't tell the people who actually know what they're doing how to do the job, just tell them to get it done._

Less than a minute later, the blue flare of light winked out and Connery collapsed in a heap on the concrete floor. Kaito waited for any signs of movement, then grabbed his bag and climbed down to confirm that Connery was still breathing, shallow but steady. Standing again as Saguru reached the ground, he gave the ICPO agent's concealing Nightmare mask a long, cold, thoughtful look, then turned to usher the detective behind a few shadowed crates. Connery would live, but he'd likely be arrested and jailed. Whatever assets he had that weren't taken for restitution would be used for Kenta's care, including surgery.

Justice was just. It was not nice.

If Saguru had anything to say, he didn't have a chance before Kid landed on the second-story ledge at the end of the catwalk above them, body language nearly radiating wariness.

"What the _hell_ was that?" Kid hissed.

Kaito quickly pitched his voice to match Jii's. There was no guarantee Kudou was already close enough to hear them, but just in case… "Connery's fate. Let's leave quickly, young master, before witnesses arrive."

Kid peered over the edge of the catwalk, visible eye narrowed dangerously. Kaito stepped out of the shadows just long enough to gesture for Kid to stay put up there, the other hand holding a finger to his lips, before fading back into the dark. He hadn't realized the light would be so bright, but maybe it was better this way. Kudou's curiosity had probably survived intact, and he would make better time to the scene than Nakamori and the task force would. They just had to be ready, and not catch his attention too soon.

Sure enough, after a minute of tense waiting, a second shadow slipped into the warehouse by way of a side door, quiet as a ghost. Kaito watched with bated breath as the whisper of movement proceeded towards the warehouse's open entrance, finally resolving into a proper shape as he entered the moonlight surrounding Connery's form.

It was Kudou. Despite being dressed entirely in black, complete with a black balaclava obscuring his face and head, and a case the right size and shape to carry a broken-down sniper's rifle slung on his back, Kaito knew it was Kudou. Even twisted inside out, the _feel_ was the same. He palmed the Change of Heart card.

_Now, for a distrac—_

Saguru stepped out from behind the crates, into Kudou's line of sight. "Well, there's something you don't see every day…"

_WHAT?_

Kaito barely managed to refrain from crunching the pasteboard in his hand as Kudou looked up, shock visible in his stance.

_No, dammit, did falling into the swimming pool scramble your brains? Stop mouthing off at my lookalikes that will happily kill you!_

"You—You're _dead!_ "

_Or apparently ALREADY TRIED._

Saguru stalked forward and around in a wide circle, forcing Kudou to pivot to keep him in line of sight. "I'm feeling better. I think I'll go for a walk…"

Kudou snorted. "Okay, I walked into that one. Too bad I'm going to have to kill you again."

"Oh, I don't think you will." Nearly opposite Kaito on Kudou's other side, Saguru smiled a shark's smile. Kudou angled the slightest bit more so that his back was almost entirely exposed to Kaito. "I wonder what Ran-san would say if she could see you now."

Kaito crept silently forward, one agonizingly slow step at a time, Shadows wrapped close to hide against Kudou's annoyingly accurate sixth sense.

"…Who?"

_Damn it, did she leave you anything at all? I don't know how this affects memory…_

Saguru was still tempting fate. "Do you remember anything before three years ago? Before Vermouth woke you up and told you that you were hers?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Short, clipped, staccato speech. The way Kudou sounded when he knew he was missing something but not what, rather than when he knew something and was hiding it.

"I think you have some idea, even if your memory is compromised. There's always been an itch, a wonder… What do you know about your childhood? What name did she give you? Did she let you keep 'Shinichi'?"

Kudou full out twitched, and began raising a handgun in Saguru's direction.

_Don't you dare._

Quick as lightning, Kaito darted a hand out, slapping Change of Heart against Kudou's neck in tandem with a silent invocation. For half a second, Kudou froze… then he let out a scream half of Tokyo should have heard and collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

Kaito caught him, barely, and a moment later Saguru had arrived to take some of the weight. Kaito gave him a not-quite-murderous-but-definitely-acidic glare and snarled, "Stop _doing_ that _!_ "

Saguru gave him a bland smile in return. "I only turn myself into bait when I know you'll make use of the distraction. As I recall, Kid has had no such guarantee."

"I didn't really have a _choice_ ," Kaito growled. "Not any better than the one I made."

Saguru sighed. "That doesn't mean I have to like it. Or let you continue to play bait when you're also the main source of firepower."

"Fine," Kaito conceded reluctantly as Kuroba approached them. "Just talk to me about it first, so you don't give me a damn heart attack."

"Provided I have your guarantee you won't try to interfere when I do take the role."

 _Much as I hate to…_ "Unless I have a better idea, yes."

Saguru nodded in acceptance, but Kuroba spoke first. "When you said more than sleight of hand, you weren't kidding. Are you sure that's him?"

Kaito smiled wryly. "Pretty sure, yeah." He pulled off Kudou's balaclava, revealing the mirror to his own face, with the resemblance made worse by the messy state of the older teen's typically flat hair.

" _Holy_ …"

"Yeah. We look like twins. Still haven't figured out why… I've never been able to find a copy of the family tree."

"And this discussion should continue later," Saguru broke in. "The Task Force will have heard that."

Kaito could already hear Inspector Nakamori bellowing in the distance. "Right. Let's scra…" The 'm' died on his lips as his hair all stood on end, reacting to the sudden awareness of an approaching, horribly familiar feel of hidden poison and oily manipulation that echoed with his false memories.

"Kuroba-kun?"

He shoved Kudou into Kuroba's arms, expression closing off. " _She's_ here."

Saguru cursed. "An officer's guise, perhaps."

Privately, Kaito couldn't help but be a little grateful that Saguru didn't question how he knew. "Yeah. She likes to take an _interest_." He nearly spat the final word, anger making another breach in the already cracking Poker Face. He couldn't entirely bring himself to care at the moment—he didn't have the reserves anymore. "Hakuba-kun, give him the taxi fare. Kuroba-kun, take Kudou-kun and go home. We'll follow."

Saguru blinked at him, looking almost surprised at having not been told to go with Kuroba. Kaito didn't want to waste the time, especially when he was pretty sure that the conclusion of the argument wouldn't be any different.

…Besides, given whom he was going to face, having Saguru to watch his back sounded better than going after her alone.

"Right." Saguru handed off a few bills, and Kuroba slung Kudou's limp arm over his shoulders.

"Are you sure?" Kuroba asked. "If she's as slippery and dangerous as you say…"

"So long as she's free, Kudou-kun will never be safe. Maybe not even then, which is why I need to talk to her. If he was a private side project and not a recognized operative, he'll be safe to re-enter society and contact his family and friends. Otherwise… not until they're gone completely."

"Mmm. Be _careful_."

Kaito nodded. They split up, the other pair vanishing down one alley while Kaito led Saguru along another. As they went, he glanced down at his remaining two cards, which had so far survived intact: Dragon Capture Jar and White Magical Hat.

_Hm, idea…_

He murmured to Saguru, "We need to be able to safely ask questions _and_ trust the answers. The only way I can manage that is a Shadow Game, like Yugi-kun pulled on Ansem. But there's always a risk, to keep the game fair."

"Kuroba-kun, I think you could safely call any given heist an iteration of a Shadow Game. I've yet to see you lose one of those."

Kaito gave him a wry smile. "Then let me do the talking. She has to know the rules, after all."

"If only so she can break them."

_And that will be a very happy sight._

Maybe this wasn't exactly the woman who haunted his nightmares, but it was close enough that if he hadn't gotten a better idea from the hand he currently held, he'd have been half-tempted by Man-Eater Bug.

_She's hurt enough people. No more._

"Okay, then… Let's do this right. White Magical Hat."

The Shadows rose, and Kaito ignored how much more energy a full summon took as opposed to a single spell or trap, concentrating on the picture of the card. The image wavered for a moment in his mind, so uncannily similar to the uniform he wore like a second skin that he couldn't help but see the thief as he _should_ be…

…As he unaccountably _was_ , stepping out of the nothing to stand before them…

… _Oops?_

It was… Kid, but not. The suit was right, hell, even the _monocle_ was right, all the way down to the charm, but the face was neither Kaito's nor Touichi's—clearly adult, but of oddly indeterminate age.

Kaito shot a mildly panicked glance down at the card in his hand. The monsters were supposed to match the images on the cards, they'd said, back in Domino... And he could have sworn that the card hadn't looked quite like that a moment ago, before he'd used it. The light was poor in the alley, but not enough for it to suddenly be so difficult to make out the colors on the figure standing in profile, cape billowing dramatically. It was almost like the picture was suddenly deeper in shadow...

Or should that be deeper in Shadow?

He looked back up, as Not-Kid finished examining his appearance beneath the moonlight, and turned a perfect smirk on Kaito.

":I like it.:"

"…Um. Good?"

":I think I may keep it, after this.:"

"That's… good?" Kaito repeated weakly. "Anyway, that's… actually a lot closer to what we need than I'd hoped to manage. We just need to change your face a little, and this should work…"

He eyed the well-manicured mustache adorning the summon's upper lip. That would definitely have to go, and he dug into a pocket to take inventory of the disguise supplies at his disposal. His little disposable razor had gone missing somewhere along the line, but he could improvise with the tiny capsule of shaving cream that he had managed to find, even if it was the neon pink variety —

":That will not be necessary.:"

Kaito looked up, startled—even Saguru looked impressed at the effortless combination of dignity, polite distaste, and faint condescension that had been packed into that cool statement—and could not help but stare, just a little. There hadn't been _time_ for the summon to do anything more than brush a gloved hand over his face, but the mustache was gone as though it had never been. Somehow the jaw line had also softened and the nose altered, so that when Not-Kid tugged the hat brim down, Kaito was hard-pressed to find any deviation from his reflection in a mirror.

"…Okay," Kaito managed after a beat. "That was a lot easier than my way would have been."

Not-Kid smirked at him. ":Dear boy, you _use_ the Shadows. I **am** the Shadows.:"

Kaito deliberately did not think about the implications of that. "Then I trust you know what to do?"

":Yes.:" _:And I will know what to say, when she faces us,:_ came directly into Kaito's mind. ":I've gone unused so long; this will be _fun_.:"

_Great. Um. Maybe when this is over, you could put your unique perspective to work assisting Méraud, er…_

_:Mmm, Lupin will do.:_

_Lupin. Right. Sure. I've got problems bigger than this Shadow Game, and if you like me enough to snark in my head, after this I would really appreciate you helping her with said problems rather than contributing to her commentary on the current insanity that is my life._

Another smirk. _:First you have to win this game, Shadow Master. But afterwards… a challenge does sound amusing.:_

Saguru's voice interrupted the exchange. "Kuroba-kun, can you hear me? They're almost to the warehouse."

He shook his head to clear it, as Lupin bowed. "Right. Stay here; I'll be back once I've baited her over."

The adrenaline rush was helping counter the energy drain, at least for the moment. Edging to the alley entrance, he reached out for the same _feel_ that had initially alerted him to her presence. He found it belonging to a nondescript Task Force officer—Sanada Ushio-san, age 37, wife and two sons, his memory for faces helpfully supplied—who stayed outside while Nakamori led the majority into the warehouse.

When her partner was looking elsewhere, Kaito stepped deliberately into her line of sight and made eye contact for just a moment. He ducked back into the alleyway once he was sure she'd recognized him as Kuroba (and consequently as Kid, given the parody of an apology note left with Snake's body). True to expectations, as he hurried back to Saguru's position he heard Sanada's voice telling the partner that he was going to check a possible movement in the alley. Grabbing his bag, he coaxed just enough time out of the seconds Vermouth would need to cross the loading area in order to effect a complete transformation into Kid's costume.

As he stepped up beside Lupin, conveniently blocking all sight of Saguru between twin capes and top hats, the detective muttered at Kaito out of the corner of his mouth, "How the hell is your suit unwrinkled?"

":Magic, my dear detective,:" Lupin purred before Kaito could answer.

… _Maybe I imprinted a little bit too much of myself on him when I was changing what he looked like._

_:I like your flair, youngling, but don't flatter yourself. You showed your thoughts to me for this Game, but my mind is not so easily manipulated.:_

_Yessir._

There was no time for Kaito to examine his knee-jerk response to Lupin's reprimand, because Vermouth stepped into the alleyway just then.

_Showtime._

"Hello, Vermouth…"


	6. Let's Play a Game

_What might have been is an abstraction_  
 _Remaining a perpetual possibility_  
 _Only in a world of speculation._  
\- Burnt Norton (I.6-8)

* * *

" _Hello, Vermouth…"_

":Let's play a Game,:" Lupin finished without hesitation.

If Vermouth felt surprised, she didn't show it. "A game, Kid-kun?"

":Your knight is removed from the board, but we know the queen is more dangerous.:"

"The game is this: One question from each of the three players must be answered truthfully. Failure to answer results in a penalty game."

"What penalty?"

":Removal from the larger game you've played for so long, so well.:"

Kaito let the Shadows flare, setting the penalty card into place out of sight. _A Dragon Capture Jar, for the elusive Dragon Lady who lies like she breathes._

"After three answers, you choose who is real. A direct question about identity is cheating."

":Choose poorly, and the same penalty applies.:"

"And if I'm correct?" Vermouth inquired mildly.

He couldn't hesitate. "Then you get a new card to play." Kaito forced himself not to turn at the tiny strangled noise behind him, indicating Saguru recognized that Kaito was putting _himself_ on the line for this.

_Sorry, Saguru-kun. Sometimes you have to gamble all or nothing._

_Of course, gambling doesn't necessarily mean leaving things to_ chance…

"How interesting… Very well. Who goes first, Kai-chan?"

Only Kid's focus kept Kaito from going stiff at the appellation. Lupin stepped in smoothly, to keep his voice from betraying them. ":Was Kudou-kun a private project, or do your colleagues know about him?:"

Vermouth's lips twisted in a parody of a smile. "Shin-chan? He's always been my little silver bullet."

Kaito felt torn between growling at her and breathing a sigh of relief.

_Silver bullets are what you use on werewolves… and you don't advertise that you have one to the monster you plan to take down. He_ should _be safe..._

"So, left Kid-kun… If I asked you who the right Kid-kun's father was, what would you say?"

_I said no direct questions!_

_:But it's not, exactly,:_ Lupin pointed out. _:The Shadows accept her loophole.:_ He spoke aloud, ":The father of Kid is Kuroba Touichi, for from his mind Kid sprang, fully grown.:"

_:Loopholes go both ways.:_

Vermouth gave them a considering look. Kaito rallied his thoughts, banishing uncertainty. "What is the secret behind your false youth?"

_If it's Pandora, at least I'll know._

"A secret makes a woman, wom…" Vermouth spoke so quickly that Kaito doubted she'd processed what kind of an answer it was until the last syllable. She trailed off with widening eyes, the finger over her lips curling to match the others. Lupin winked out of existence, role in the game complete, as translucent color rose from the ground to make two halves of the Dragon Capture Jar that snapped together around her person.

Removing Kid's effects, Kaito favored her immobile form with a feral little smile. "Penalty Game… You're mine, Vermouth."

She stared at him for a moment through the shifting colors, as Sanada's mask quickly dissolved beneath the Jar's effects to reveal her true appearance. The face was one Kaito knew only from old pictures of Touichi's students, but he recognized her all the same. Kudou had been right.

Opening her mouth to speak—to cajole, bribe, or threaten, Kaito didn't know and didn't care—Vermouth emitted a breathy wheeze and then stopped short, expression morphing into one of utter shock and horror.

_Vocal cords paralyzed open. Imitation abilities neutralized, but not life-threatening. Perfect._

"You're off the board now," Kaito informed her. "You'll get your limbs back; I'm not that cruel. But your days of impersonation are over." _For what you did to Kudou-kun. To me._

He turned around to ask Saguru for ideas about what to do with her now that they had her, and stopped short. The blond was standing ramrod straight, gloved hands clenched, and breathing slowly through his nose as he gave Kaito a death-glare. Saguru should not have been able to pull off Arctic-level cold fury without the still-present Hanshin Tigers baseball cap adding a hint of absurd humor, but somehow he managed it.

"You do not," Saguru growled with precise enunciation, "get to lecture me on playing bait."

"I told you it was a risk," Kaito protested.

"That was not a risk. That was throwing yourself off a cliff _without your_ _bloody glider."_

"Shadow Games use the players' natures against them… I had to tempt her with something she would want, so that she would play and lose."

For a moment, Saguru seemed to tense like a coiled spring wound one too many times, and then Kaito cringed at the sound of a fist smacking full force into the alley wall, accompanied by a foul curse. He thought he heard at least one of Saguru's bones crack, but the only subsequent movement Saguru made was bowing his head, alley shadows hiding the expression on his profile.

" _You didn't tell me._ "

"...I didn't think I would lose." Kaito approached hesitantly. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm sorry."

Silence. Then Saguru finally retracted his arm, cradling the injured hand in his other as he straightened, still not looking at Kaito. "If you continue giving me heart attacks at this rate, I doubt I'll live past twenty."

… _And you turn nineteen in three months. Okay, yeah, bad, even if it's exaggerating and sorta-metaphorical._

Saguru finally turned to face him. "Have you always been this easily mistaken for suicidal and I just didn't notice, or is it that this disturbing echo to your nightmares is interfering with your ability to think?"

_Erk. Am I really that bad right now?_

: _Speaking as outsiders?:_ Méraud and Lupin echoed together in his brain. : _Yes.:_

_Crap._

"Um… Door Number Two?" Saguru gave him a level look, which Kaito tried to match with one of genuine apology. "Vermouth… brings up bad memories."

Saguru sighed. "Then at least I can take comfort in knowing that my observational skills are slightly less than complete rubbish."

"You're the best detective I know." At Saguru's startled expression, Kaito gave him a lopsided grin. "You figured me out from a single hair and a pool of suspects to weed out. Kudou-kun had to cheat with inside information." Encouraged by a faint chuff, Kaito added, "I'll give you the details when I can, and you can chew me out if they involve me taking stupid risks. Okay?"

After another moment the last of the aggrieved stiffness drained away, and Saguru's lips quirked upward. "I suppose I'll take what I can get. You're including future heists in that, of course…"

"What?"

The smile widened a touch, offsetting the fine lines of pain leaking onto Saguru's face. "So long as I chase him, nothing says I have to ever catch Kid, or refrain from helping him keep his damn fool hide intact."

"You… but…" Somewhere, Kaito knew, he still had coherency, a careless grin and a silver tongue. Just not accessible at the moment, apparently.

Mildly, Saguru added, "That's why they call it a paradigm shift, I believe."

"Oh. …You sure?" That would be weird when they got home, but… also kind of nice, to have someone quick enough to bounce ideas off of, both the brilliant and the stupid.

"Trust me, Kuroba-kun, I wouldn't ask if I weren't sure."

_I do trust you, I just…_

Kaito paused, and re-ran that first clause. Somehow, when he hadn't been looking, the concept of trust as applied to Saguru had flipped from 'maybe in the future' to 'yes, right now.'

_:You have that person Cade-san wanted you to find after all, Kaito-kun.:_ Méraud sounded far too amused for her own good.

_Are you snarking at me because you've made progress and not told me yet, or because you need a break before you bash your scaly head into a wall from frustration?_

_:We're working. Lupin-san has some…:_ She hesitated _. :Intriguing ideas.:_

_Tell me later. Please. When I don't have other things to pay attention to._

Méraud's presence withdrew, and Kaito massaged around his temples. "Sorry. I seem to have two voices in my head, now."

"You mean you didn't already?"

Kaito rolled his eyes, trying to regain the original thread of conversation. "Okay. When we get home, you can help me plan the heist for Pandora, too. And any more after that if we're wrong about the target."

"Thank you."

He smiled. "I think that's my line. Or maybe we're even. How bad is your hand?"

"It shouldn't need to be set, but I suspect I'll be using the potion in my bag. A portable staff is rather useless when you can't wield it."

"Mmm. If it's for bones, I don't know how fast a potion would work… Let me see it?"

Saguru shook his head, but with a slight smile. "If you plan to use a card, do it after we've taken care of our audience. I'll be fine until then."

"Oh… right." Kaito glanced over his shoulder at Vermouth, who seemed to have recovered at least the appearance of equilibrium. "Any ideas?"

"Given the circumstances… perhaps Hakuba-san would know a good destination."

"Good point." Kaito dug out his cell phone, which was actually Kuroba's phone since they'd determined that Kaito and Saguru's phones didn't work in the alternate Japan. Hakuba had insisted they take it just in case, since Kuroba wasn't about to carry it.

The phone clicked on. "I take it the colorful light display was your doing?" Hakuba asked without preamble, young voice dry.

"Uh-huh." Kaito yawned as the adrenaline rush began to fade. "Gotta question for you, since you're the detective after the crows this time. Who's the best to hand over a bottle of Vermouth to?"

"Bloody hell, you caught _her_ , as well?" Hakuba paused. "Jodie Santemillion, of the FBI, currently resides in the Beika district."

Kaito blinked. "FBI? They're not even the right agency to be working on foreign soil." Watching American media paid off sometimes.

"It seems to be a personal grudge... Her presence appears to fall beneath plausible deniability."

"Huh." Kaito resisted the desire to ask how Hakuba had crossed paths with them. They were both obviously after the same people, but there were more important things to worry about than satisfying his curiosity. "Do you have an address, or a phone number?"

"Address." Hakuba rattled off the series of neighborhood-block-building numbers. "She'll be quite happy to accept your package."

"Perfect. See you later." Hanging up, he glanced at Saguru. "Do you have enough for another cab?" Risking a Shadowrift to a place he'd never been was not his idea of a good time, especially when he still wanted to fix Saguru's hand before energy-drain forced him into a dead sleep . With the Shadows here so sparse compared to Domino, he wasn't even sure he'd be able to manage the rift at all.

"Yes, just don't ask me to buy everyone dinner later."

"Deal." With a twist of will, Kaito ensured that the Dragon Capture Jar effects would remain permanently, then ended the trap. All of Vermouth's hidden weapons had been neutralized or destroyed with no hope of recovery, and the woman seemed to know when she'd been beaten—after the Jar vanished, she simply stood still with no attempt to run. "Let's get out of here and hail a ride."

Finding a taxi was a remarkably simple affair; the ride to Beika even more so. Kaito considered staying in the cab, but the combination of Saguru's hand and wanting to see Vermouth's fate to the end prompted him to escort Vermouth to Jodie's front door himself while Saguru stayed in the cab and moved as little as possible.

Vermouth, thankfully, seemed to have accepted her defeat with equanimity, or she simply didn't want to risk what else Kaito might have up his sleeves should she try to run. He herded her into the elevator and along the 21st floor without incident, then pushed the doorbell-intercom.

"Who is it?" came the cheerful inquiry, in English.

"Santemillion-san? My name is—" _What the hell, he could use the owed favor,_ "—Kudou Shinichi. I have a present for you, compliments of the Kaitou Kid."

"Oh?" Jodie switched to Japanese. "What sort of present would the Kid-kun have for an English teacher?"

_Wait a beat, always maintain timing…_

"A bottle of Vermouth."

The door flew inwards, revealing a woman in casual clothes who looked… quite a lot like Vermouth, if you discounted the haircut, but maybe that was just the gaijin blood. She also swore like a polyglot sailor, _sotto voce,_ contrasting with an expression of mingled shock and delight.

He smiled, keeping the charm to Kudou's level. "A little bird told me you might know what to do with her."

"Oh~, ye~s," Jodie purred, looking Vermouth up and down, smile gaining a tinge of perplexity as she processed that Vermouth was unrestrained but still staying put.

"She's all yours. No weapons at the moment, but I recommend handcuffs anyway. She seems to have lost her voice for the foreseeable future, but you won't mind, I hope."

"I'm sure we can work around that, ah… Kudou-kun, is it?"

He nodded. "I'm sure you'll take good care of her… Don't waste the chance. If a few things work out, I or an acquaintance of mine will be in touch in the future."

She stepped back to allow Vermouth entrance, and the older woman made the custody exchange with an elegant dignity that almost made Kaito envious. Almost. "Good luck to you."

He bowed slightly with a smile. "Thank you. Things are looking up."

He sauntered away without giving Jodie time to respond and headed back to the cab, address already filed carefully away for later. Saguru gave him a tired smile as the taxi carried them back to Ekoda.

"All in all, a productive night."

"Yeah. Even if it's not over yet."

* * *

When they made it home, Kuroba met them at the door. "Kudou-san is still out, since I gassed him on the way to the taxi, just in case. He's about as comfortable as he can get for being unarmed and restrained. I know you think whatever magic you did helped, but you can't be too careful… and the face thing is just _creepy_."

"Mmm," Kaito replied. _It's easier when you're the one creating the weirdness rather than receiving it, I guess._ _And the weirdness at home isn't this sort of disparity, either._ "Vermouth is taken care of and Nightmare should be, too. Kudou-kun is all that's left, not counting Hakuba-kun's hand."

"His hand?" Kuroba turned to Saguru. "What happened?"

Still cradling his hand carefully to his chest, Saguru responded blandly, "A wall got in my way."

"Uh… huh." Kuroba's expression implied he knew what that phrase meant when translated from Saguru-speak. "There's first-aid and painkillers in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Do you need me to stay watching Kudou-san?"

"No," Saguru replied, "particularly not if he unnerves you. I'll handle it."

"If you're sure…"

Saguru shrugged. "I've met him as a good man several times. Go get some sleep."

Kuroba exhaled a small sigh of relief. "Okay. Find me if you need anything."

He headed off to his bedroom, leaving Kaito and Saguru to continue to the den. Kudou had been set up on a futon on the floor, hands ziptied behind his back and ankles similarly restrained. Saguru looked over the setup with a critical eye.

"The room is warm enough for no blanket to be all right, but we'll likely need a basin handy later."

"You can get it after your hand bones aren't cracked. Sit down so I can look at it."

"Tyrant." Saguru sat down anyway, stiff posture the only sign of how badly his hand had to ache.

"Ringmaster," Kaito retorted, sitting beside him and holding out a hand. "Give."

Saguru cracked a smile. "Or you'll steal it?" He held it out, expression carefully clear of any signs of pain.

"Of course." Kaito took hold just below the wrist and _very_ gently brushed his fingers around Saguru's already swollen knuckles, checking for any hidden damage.

Like Saguru had claimed, it didn't seem to need to be set, so the bones were only cracked rather than snapped altogether. His fingers twitched twice during Kaito's examination, but the blond didn't so much as hiss even once. It reminded Kaito of himself, in a weirdly disconcerting sort of way.

"It's not as bad as it could have been… You must have sturdy bones."

A pause. "So I'm told. And a high pain tolerance."

Kaito glanced up sharply at Saguru, but the blond shrugged the comment off. Looking back down at the hand that was mostly his fault, Kaito decided to let it go. His own curiosity wasn't a good enough reason to leave the injury as it was any longer than necessary, and if what Bakura had said about healing cards was true, in about a minute he wasn't going to care enough to pursue it. For now.

"Give me a sec…" He grabbed his side deck one-handed and sorted through the cards until he reached Blue Medicine. He wasn't sure how numbers translated to energy, so better to start low and do it twice than overreach entirely with Dian Keto.

Card in hand, he hesitated and looked back at Saguru. "You ready? I don't know exactly how this is going to work."

Saguru's expression could only be described as placid. "I need my hand back."

"…Right." Kaito took a deep breath and touched the card against Saguru's knuckles, feather-light. "Blue Medicine."

It turned out, Kaito acknowledged woozily about a minute later, that healing spell cards took more energy than a full summon—possibly even more than a Shadowrift. Despite having more stamina than when he'd originally started using the cards, he still felt not unlike he'd been hit by a truck.

A hand steadied him as he swayed in place. "Idiot. Are you all right?"

"…Gonna crash now." He gave Saguru a look that he vaguely realized expressed a lot more desperation than he ought to be comfortable with, but he couldn't help it. "Don't wanna dream."

Saguru slipped off the couch, giving him room to lie down. "I'll wake you up. My hand feels better than new, by the way."

"…'Kay. Good." His head dropped to meet the throw pillow, and he fell into the dark.

* * *

_He waited in the dark for his appointment to arrive. It had been tempting to follow Kudou, though, after the coincidence of being on the same coaster train. Kudou hadn't seen the resemblance through his generic teenager's disguise, of course, but Kaito remembered him from three years ago when Kudou and his little girlfriend had visited Vermouth for the Golden Apple premiere._

_He thought he hated Kudou. Hard to be sure—he didn't really feel anything anymore. But he'd watched Kudou from the shadows in New York, with his perfect little life and girl and mother and words of justice to a cracked murderess and mercy for Vermouth when she'd tried to kill them both and she'd fallen and he would have been FREE…_

… _Kudou made it so very easy to hate him._

_He would have followed, but work took priority. Vermouth would be… unhappy… if he came home without results. Were he still eight, he might have cringed at the thought of her ire, but he wasn't that child anymore. Not that weak… not that naïve. But he still wasn't going to disappoint her._

_His quarry for today finally finished his restless circle of the meeting area, shuffling along beneath the roller coaster and just below Kaito's perch. He adjusted his fedora—traditional crow headwear, and he looked rather good in it if he did say so himself—to sit more securely on his head. He slipped backwards to hang by his knees from the metal support, suspended in the shadows above the nervous man's bald head._

" _Hello, CEO-san…"_

_It gave him some level of petty pleasure to watch the man jump like a startled rabbit. The exchange went smoothly, 150 million yen in an inconspicuous backpack for one copy of the blackmail photos depicting the company's trivial attempts at gun smuggling. The man knew it was trivial too, knew that he couldn't hope to match their scope or scale, but when he said so in a poor attempt at self-justification Kaito gave him a dangerous smile._

" _You shouldn't go there, CEO-san, for your sake." He gave the words a moment to sink in, then swung up effortlessly to crouch on the beam and purred, "Get out while you still can."_

_He tracked the man's headlong flight towards the entrance of the park, and noticed an unexpected shadow that didn't belong to the surrounding concrete and steel. Backpack in place, two careless leaps took him just above the shadow, which resolved into the shocked and wary form of Kudou Shinichi._

" _One of these things is not like the others," he sing-songed, pulling the hat brim just a touch lower even though the dusk concealed him already. "If it isn't Kudou Shinichi…_ detective _."_

_Acting like nothing could ever happen to him, or shatter the pretty little bubble. Time for detectives to learn that things_ _**could** _ _go terribly, horribly wrong._

" _Tell me, detective… how fast do you run? Faster than flight? …Faster than death?"_

_You're in_ my _world now, and it will break you. I promise._

_Kudou finally showed some sense and bolted. Kaito followed, riding the thrill of the chase with glee. No one else could match him when it came to speed. Falcons were unmatched as predators except by those who held the jesses…_

"Kuroba! Dammit, wake up." Saguru's voice accompanied a hand roughly squeezing his upper arm. Kaito's eyes flew open, followed by a shudder that rippled from his scalp to his toes before Saguru added, "You sleep too quietly. Are you all right?"

"Kami…" Kaito swallowed down feeling sick and pushed himself upright, trying to see the futon on the floor. "Kudou-kun," he rasped.

Saguru shifted to let him see the floor better, not moving away. "Still asleep. The anesthetic gas is long since worn off, but I suspect he's simply exhausted in every sense of the word."

"How long? Not surprising… I think… I had to play merry hell with his mind, to get him back."

"Nearly five hours since you dropped off. And before you ask, I'm not tired; your card had enough left over to provide a significant energy boost." Saguru paused, then added, "How bad was it? I have a basic understanding of events, but not… of the experience, except what you mentioned about the end last time. …No one else will overhear, right now."

' _Cept you, but… I trust you. …Right?_

He probed the thought like one might investigate a loose tooth. Yes. He was the Kaito who trusted Saguru, and didn't hate Kudou. That was important.

"He hates him," Kaito murmured.

"The… assassin hates Kudou-kun?"

He nodded. "Kudou-kun and Mouri-san visited Vermouth in New York three years ago. Here, she took him somehow… There, she already had… not-me. And… the memory's not clear, but she was pretending to be a serial killer, baiting the FBI, and the other two ran across her and saved her life when _he_ would have let her die. And Kudou-kun just got to walk away, back to his perfect little life." He shuddered again involuntarily at the unintentional echo of the dream's phrasing.

Saguru's hand squeezed his shoulder. "Why did he leave Kudou-kun alive and walk away?"

_Why, why… It's always why with you. Gonna get you into trouble. Already did._ Kaito blinked, tried to focus.

"He's… He gambles. Like her. Doesn't think he 'n' Kudou-kun are related at all, so it's a great big joke played on 'im by the universe… When Kudou-kun didn't die right away, decided if he survived then it'd be more fun to play with him till he broke. But he wasn't gonna help him either, so just walk away and let luck take over. Vague description, face disguised, no civilian identity to trace back to… It would have been safe, even before knowing Kudou-kun'd lost his sight. And then he could just take things away a little at a time, all the things he cared about… starting with justice. It's not justice when the criminal always gets away."

"Unless you count a thief whose reasons are just, simply not within the law." Saguru gave him a faint smile, then sobered. "And then I suppose it was security, when all he loved was threatened."

"I…" _Not I._ "He likes mind games. A lot. …Too."

"…You wouldn't be you without them, I suspect. Motive makes all the difference."

Kaito didn't get anywhere in formulating a response before Kudou shifted with a faint groan. "Oh kami, there had better be a bucket…"

Saguru moved quickly, getting Kudou arranged with a waiting basin before the retching began. By the time Kaito joined them on the floor, he felt confident enough to remove the zipties on Kudou's hands and feet. Kudou had too much damn dignity to do something like this unless it was genuine, because there were better ways to try to get people off guard than losing everything you'd eaten for the past twelve hours.

Kudou merely wrapped his arms around his stomach until the dry heaves finally petered out. Saguru tentatively lowered the bowl while Kaito grabbed a waiting cup of water and held it beneath Kudou's bowed head. "Here, you'll want this."

"Ngh." Kudou took it gingerly, hands shaking with fine tremors as he rinsed his mouth. "Feels like I've got the hangover from hell. 'Course," he allowed with a bitter, mirthless chuckle, "given my 'ssociations with alcohol…"

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it," Saguru quoted in English, then continued in Japanese, "but that's only true of the memories left behind."

Kudou froze for a moment, and then Kaito had to catch the glass before it could hit the carpet as Kudou's head snapped up to stare at the blond.

"You're dead. I remember… Oh Kami-sama…" The tremor in Kudou's hands spread until his whole body shook in a manner disturbingly similar to the last time they'd met a teenage Kudou.

"We know what happened, mostly," Saguru murmured, laying a hand on Kudou's shoulder. "There was nothing you could have done. I won't lie and say everything will be fine… but it can only get better."

"I … So many people… I killed…"

_That doesn't seem Vermouth's style to do often, but when even one is too many…_

"We know," Kaito replied gently, and left it at that.

"And I didn't care." Kudou's voice wavered between numbness and utter horror, giving Saguru a glassy stare as worse things than a solid ghost likely paraded through his mind. "How could I not care?"

"She drugged you. Conditioned you." Kaito paused, forcing unconsciously clenched fists to relax. "Vermouth must have loved seeing someone from your family being the complete opposite of who you really were."

_She seemed to think that way for m… not-me._

Saguru's hand lightly squeezed Kudou's shoulder. "Not to mention… Even with everything else, you saved the lives of at least two people as well."

"I… What?" Kudou's eyes refocused enough to give Saguru a startled look.

"Snake was going to put a bullet through Kid's heart when you stopped him, wasn't he? Nightmare would have been the same except for outside interference. And…" Saguru looked over his shoulder at the doorway. "I _know_ you're eavesdropping. Come in already."

Kaito blinked in surprise as the child-size Hakuba sidled into the room, giving Kudou a wary look. "How did you know?"

"It's what I would have done when I heard Kudou-kun wake up," Saguru admitted with a half-smile.

Kudou ignored them in favor of giving Hakuba an utterly perplexed look. With the blond hair dyed brown, even without brown contacts the resemblance was far from obvious. "Who…?"

Hakuba paced a few steps forward, stopping well outside of arm's reach. "I'm Hakuba Saguru—the one you tried to kill. Tried to make it neat, clean, and impersonal, didn't you? The poison did this instead."

"I… shouldn't believe that's possible, but after Kaa—Vermouth…" Kudou trailed off and dropped his head. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't mean a damn thing, but I'm _sorry_ … all the tests said it would be fast. Final. Not…" He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

Hakuba eyed Kudou for a long moment, then stepped forward again, seeming to accept that what Kaito had done to recover Kudou's old self had really worked. "I forgive you. I admit I'd rather be like this than dead, even if everyone else is so bloody _tall_."

Kudou laughed. There was still a bit of a broken edge to it, but it wasn't as bad as a few Kaito had heard.

"Thank you. I'm sorry. If I could fix it, I would… But who does that make you?" he added, looking back at Saguru. Kaito suspected that if Kudou weren't trying desperately not to upset the welcome he had among them, he would have checked Saguru's face for latex. Saguru seemed to know it too, because he tugged on his own cheek to show the natural skin.

"Hakuba Saguru, dimensional traveler. It's complicated."

"Dimens…" Another laugh. "Sure, why not? Does that make you Quinn Mallory or Peter Bishop?"

"Of course you would go by the American shows… More like The Doctor. My TARDIS is there on your left."

"I'd complain about being the vehicle, but after we turned Riku-kun into the luggage..." Kaito grinned at Kudou as the older teen gave him a wide-eyed look. "Hi. Kuroba Kaito, also dimensional traveler. Nice to meet you."

"But… If you're not Kid, then…"

"Kuroba is asleep in his room," Hakuba answered. "You've known, then?"

"Yeah, I figured it out, but Kaa…" Kudou trailed off, face white. "Vermouth knew already. What am I gonna do? She'll want me back."

Kaito allowed himself a faint smile of vicious satisfaction. "She's in law enforcement custody as we speak. You were a pet project, right?"

Kudou shuddered. "Personal lackey. If she wanted it done…"

"She's gone now, for good. No one else should even notice or care you're gone." Kaito smiled with more humor. "It's probably even safe for you to go home again, so long as you have a good cover story for your absence, now that you're properly you again."

Kudou gave him a sidelong glance. "You… did something. How?" A lost tone crept into his voice. "Why?"

Kaito moved a hand to Kudou's other shoulder. "Where we're from, you managed to become a detective. Helped a lot of people find justice. Chased Kid when Hakuba-kun was out of town. I wasn't going to let Vermouth, of all people, take that away from you. Not when I had the power to change you back to the guy I remember."

Kudou stared.

"Part of the TARDIS package. I couldn't stop her from taking you—"

_Damn, wish I'd thought of that earlier—_

: _No, you don't,:_ Méraud mentally snapped. : _Does the risk of getting lost to the winds of time mean nothing to you, when you can't make a proper connection to_ _ **where**_ _you want to go, let alone when?_

_Okay, no…_

"—I couldn't stop her from taking you," he repeated wryly, "but I wasn't leaving you there. I thought… anything would be better than leaving you like that forever."

Another shudder. "Kami-sama, yes. Needing brain bleach is still better than… that. I just… I can't risk going back. If she drugged me like you think, someone probably gave her the drugs to screw with my head, and all it takes is one person to put the pieces together for my parents and R-Ran's family to be dead."

_I_ _**hate** _ _loopholes. Hatehatehate. Can't even trust Shadow Game answers._

"If that's true… you can work with Vermouth's new custodians. Santemillion-san and her colleagues already think that you handed her over to them in collusion with Kid, and—"

"They do?" Kudou looked startled.

"I took the liberty of using your name. They would be happy to know whatever you can tell them. All you have to say is that you were kidnapped, Kid got you out but it's not safe for you to go home, and you've been working together against them ever since." He gave Kudou a sharp smile. "It's true, just… flexible in terms of timeline."

"Heh. You would play with words like that."

"Comes with the job description."

"Insane but clever?" Saguru deadpanned.

"Quiet, you," Kaito replied with a roll of his eyes, then continued. "That way, the only people who would know the whole story would be your parents and maybe Ran-san, when you tell them."

"So long as I'm not on record somewhere, I never tried hacking Vermouth's private files…" Kudou had an almost wistful look. "I couldn't go with you? The Doctor traditionally has a companion as well as a TARDIS…"

_And we two've proven empirically that we don't care about what you did, while the home team's regard is more iffy._

Kaito smiled slightly "There's already a Kudou-kun waiting for us back home, and I think three lookalikes is a bit much for plausibility. Not to mention that it's not fair to your parents, Ran-san, or a certain loudmouth detective from Osaka desperate for a friend as smart as he is."

Kudou's face shifted into the expression that could only be described as: ' _Bwah?'_

"Osaka? …Hattori Heiji-kun?"

"Bingo!" Kaito lilted in English. "You two make a disgustingly good investigative team."

Kudou bowed his head again. "You mean he and _your_ Shinichi do. I'm not… I'm not that person, no matter how much I want to be. Wanted to be."

"Who you were doesn't change who you can become. Either direction," Kaito added, shoving away the still-too-fresh dream from his mind. "It just comes down to the choices we make, when we _can_ make them."

"I…"

"It's your choice," he continued relentlessly. "Either you can take the step to move past what she did to you, or you can choose to believe that you're broken, and let her win."

"…Why do you have to sound so damn reasonable?" Kudou demanded plaintively "My parents…"

"Kudou-san's writer's website still has the news that you're missing on the front page," Hakuba broke in quietly. "I checked earlier this morning. It seems he's offered the rights to the royalties of the book published just after your disappearance to whomever effects your safe return."

"But they don't _know_ …"

"I can't speak for your parents, Kudou-kun," Saguru offered unexpectedly, "but as an older brother? If Aidan were in your situation, I wouldn't give a damn about anything he'd been forced to do to stay alive—just that he _was_ alive, and could come back to me."

Silence. Then, _finally_ , something seemed to settle in place behind Kudou's eyes. He took a deep breath. "Okay. I… I don't want the Syndicate to get away with what they've done. I'll work with whoever those people are, and when it's safe, I'll… go home."

"And tell at least someone," Kaito prompted. _If I don't get to bury and fester and explode, you don't either._

Kudou's lips quirked ever so slightly. "And… tell my parents."

Kaito smiled back. "All right, then. Hakuba-kun knows the address, he can get you there after we've gone…" Kaito trailed off, eyeing Hakuba's small frame. "Ne, Hakuba-kun, do you have any leads for getting big again?"

Blue Medicine had worked perfectly, after all. And if Hakuba didn't have access to whatever avenues Kudou had found to make it _back_ …

To Kaito's surprise, Hakuba's face tinged faintly pink. "Ah, we do have one lead, yes. It's… complicated."

"We've got time," Kaito pointed out.

"Mmm." He hesitated, eyes darting to Kudou, and then sighed. "Very well. Several months ago, the drug's main creator tried to escape the Syndicate by taking her own poison, after they killed her sister."

"Sherry?" Kudou came to attention not unlike a bloodhound catching a familiar scent. "She's alive?"

Hakuba twitched slightly. "If you were a pet project, how the hell do you know her?"

"I… Vermouth escorted her from the U.S. to Japan when she finished her education and was ready to continue her parents' research. And Vermouth didn't go anywhere without me, even though I was never officially there. We talked on the plane ride over. …She was nice. And I knew the drug was hers because Vermouth said so when she gave it to me."

"I see." Hakuba massaged his forehead. "She had the same reaction I did, and with nowhere else to go she ran to the home of the only unconfirmed death among the human test subjects."

Memory sparked in Kaito's mind. "Small, red-brown hair, tendency to fade into the background except when making sarcastic remarks?"

"Yes…"

"Heh. She must have done the same where we're from, with Kudou-kun."

_And isn't that_ interesting, _that she ran and is still alive._ _Kudou must rub off on people. It's never ones he's close to that drop dead._

The dream Not-Kaito had carried some of Sherry's poison, though he hadn't had a face to put with the name. Leaving Kudou's death to chance had been more amusing, at the time… Kaito wasn't sure what had happened to her; not-him hadn't cared.

"Mmm. Well. To make a long story short," Hakuba continued, "my mother had returned to Japan after I disappeared, and apparently convinced my father to take Shiho-san in when Baaya found her collapsed by the front gate." A wry smile. "Mother has a soft spot for those in need, and always wanted a little girl. We attend the same elementary school now, and a 'play date' is a reasonable excuse for her to bring by the latest attempt for a cure she's managed in my lab."

"Mother returned to Japan?" Saguru had an odd note in his voice, and when Kaito glanced over his expression seemed almost wistful.

"…Yes. Apparently my possible death was sufficient for her to call Grandmother out as a domineering harridan and leave the estate management in the hands of a younger sibling who actually enjoys it."

"I see," Saguru unconsciously echoed Hakuba's earlier reply. "Does… do they know you're all right?"

Hakuba was quiet for a very long moment. "No. I won't risk it."

Kaito squeezed Kudou's shoulder again, before the other teen could get it into his head to relapse back into more pained apologies. "Well, with any luck, it'll be over sooner rather than later. Which brings us back to the first question… are you having any luck on the cure front?"

Hakuba sighed. "Not yet. She hasn't had much time, and… without her notes, it's almost impossible to reverse engineer an antidote without a sample of the poison."

"Wait… so you need a sample of the Apotoxin?" Kudou looked ridiculously hopeful, like a puppy appealing for a piece of steak.

"If not a copy of the research notes, yes," Hakuba allowed.

"Hang on—um—" Kudou's hands went to his torso. "Where's my coat?"

"Here." Saguru retrieved the folded cloth from the corner of the room, where it lay on top of the unopened case Kudou had been carrying.

"Thanks, um, let's see…" Kudou trailed his fingers along the inside lining until they found what he was looking for, and he pulled out a tiny black tin from a concealed pocket. Flipping it open, he revealed three small pills held by a rectangle of thin foam. "Would this help?"

"Bloody _hell,_ " Hakuba breathed, tone somewhere between revulsion and reverence. The foam had a place for a fourth pill, but it was empty.

"After you, I haven't—didn't—she didn't need any like…" Kudou's eyes darted to the case in the corner before his free hand covered his face. "I'm sorry. I can't fix… most of what I did. But if these can make a difference… please take them."

Hakuba did without further comment. "Thank you, Kudou-kun. This may be exactly what we needed."

Kudou nodded, silent.

Kaito exhaled a breath of relief. He would have used the Shadows if there hadn't seemed to be any alternative, but he was just as happy to keep the energy he had.

"Everything seems to work out, then." Everyone turned at Kuroba's neutral voice in the doorway, Kudou tensing beneath Kaito and Saguru's hands.

_Damn, I'm good, if I don't even notice myself._ "Morning. Been there long?"

"Since you got labeled as a vehicle, but you didn't seem to need my input in the conversation."

"Good, then." _Better to have seen Kudou acting human before we try leaving._ "Kuroba-kun, meet Kudou-kun. Kudou-kun, Kuroba-kun."

"Hi," Kudou said softly, eyes flicking briefly up to Kuroba's and then back down to the hands in his lap. "I'm sorry. I know it doesn't help, I know I'll be saying it for the rest of my life, but… I'm sorry."

Kudou missed the way Kuroba's mouth tightened slightly, the way Kaito knew he did himself when he was angry _for_ someone rather than angry _with_ the person, before Kuroba sighed and shook his head. "I don't blame you. I blame Vermouth and her sick sadistic streak. I just… need time to get used to this."

Kudou nodded, one thumb stroking across the back of his other hand in an almost nervous tic. "I'll get out of your hair soon. I can take you back to Vermouth's base of operations and give you first stab at whatever might be useful to you there before I go to Santemillion-san and hand it over."

"Well, not entirely out of my hair." Kuroba's lips quirked at Kudou's confused look. "Supposedly you're my contact, if Hakuba's FBI agents are willing to collaborate with a thief in order to destroy the crows' nest."

"Oh." Kudou hesitated. "Are you okay with that?"

Kuroba shrugged. "I will be."

"You'll need help reintegrating into real society when all this is over," Hakuba added. "It might as well be us, since we'll know why."

"I wouldn't want to trouble you…"

Kaito reached over, deliberately slow, and ruffled Kudou's hair. "Kudou-kun, trust me. Your company will be welcome, especially since when Kid is gone Hakuba-san will need people on our level to help him keep Kuroba-kun from getting bored."

"Hey!"

Hakuba ignored Kuroba's amused protest and nodded, child's face comically serious. "I'll need all the help I can get."

Kudou actually cracked a smile. "If you're sure, I guess maybe I could give you a hand."

"Good," Kaito declared in satisfaction. "Of course, on that front…" He glanced at Kuroba. "About Kid. No promises, but you might consider taking Kudou-kun to see his parents, wherever they are. They can keep a secret from the public sphere, and you could ask that instead of royalties, Kudou-san get you access to the Hope diamond long enough to check it against the moon."

Okay, he could understand why Kudou had had so much fun telling him about Pandora that time. The reactions were priceless.

Kuroba hissed through his teeth. "That's crazy… but it makes a sick sort of sense. Hell. You're sure about his parents?"

"…I can't give a full guarantee, but I can't imagine Kudou-kun could have kept up the charade back home without them knowing and keeping the secret—and it's just as important, here."

Kuroba eyed him askance. "What about with Kid? Given what just happened…"

"Dad used to chase him," Kudou spoke up hesitantly, "but… I think it was more like you and Hakuba-kun, before… before he was shrunk, than how Inspector Nakamori chases you."

"Apparently Dad taught Yukiko-san disguise magic," Kaito added. "With how smart people say Kudou-san is… maybe he knew."

Hakuba smiled wryly at Kuroba. "We two seemed to come to an understanding well enough, and if it's enough to end Kid's quest before someone decides to reintroduce the snipers now that Vermouth isn't holding them back…"

_Definitely a good idea, if you've fallen out of practice when it comes to dodging them._

"Mmm." Kuroba nodded, seeming to come to a decision. He gave Kudou a look of consideration, gauging the older teen's state of mind. "Could you handle it? If it's too soon for anything in person, you could always make a video recording to tell them you're all right."

There was no mistaking Kudou's look of relief. "A recording. I think I could handle that."

"Okay. Hakuba, you track down what country the Kudous are located in right now while Kudou-kun and I make a video. Then I can get him in disguise and we can head for Vermouth's place before mom gets home and wonders where all the lookalikes came from. From there Kudou-kun can call the FBI to come meet him, and you and I can track down the Kudous if they're in Tokyo."

If one thing seemed to be universally true, it was that once a Kaito decided on his course of action, he didn't delay.

"It looks like you're off to a good start."

Kuroba smiled at him. "Much better than we would have been without you."

Kudou nodded fervently in agreement. "Thank you. I… Thanks."

Kaito smiled faintly. "Glad to help."

_Something to counterbalance the nightmares with. But would it be too much to ask for the next try home to be, if not home, some place that hasn't gone to hell?_

He sighed. "Not to cut and run, but if things seem to be settled, we ought to be moving on. Our absence is sort of covered for, but the less time we're gone, the better."

Kuroba nodded. "Be careful… I hope you get home."

_Me too._

Their departure went much smoother than their arrival had; once all their belongings were gathered and last goodbyes made, and Kaito remembered to tell Kuroba to visit Touda at the mall sometime, Kaito led Saguru out of the house and back towards the park.

"Is there a reason you were reluctant to reach for home from inside?" Saguru inquired mildly as they went. "Hakuba-san looked sorely disappointed to not get to see our pathway for a second time."

"He'll live… and I didn't want to give Kudou-kun any temptation. Even though he agreed to stay, he did ask to come along." Kaito gave Saguru a good-natured glare. "Remember what happened the last time someone agreed to stay home?"

Saguru smirked. "I'm afraid I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean."

"Uh-huh. Sure." They entered the park, deserted due to the early morning, and Kaito took a deep breath and reached for the Shadows. As always, they were scarcer here than in Domino City, but practice helped to ease the difficulty (if not the energy drain) that it took for him to grasp them and then _pull_ for _Aoko-home-outofsight._

The Shadowrift opened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued thanks to RandomImagination for beta. Quinn Mallory refers to Sliders, and Peter Bishop is a character on Fringe. Dragon Lady is yet another TVTrope.


	7. A Secret Makes...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outside of dialogue, natives are referred to by last names and our two favorite travelers are designated by their first names.

What might have been and what has been  
Point to one end, which is always present.  
~Burnt Norton (I.9-10)

* * *

Walking through a Shadowrift, Kaito decided, was infinitely preferable to falling through one. Even if the other side wasn't home, precisely…

"Isn't this the Haido Mall, Kuroba-kun?"

"Yeah… Aoko must have gone shopping, I guess." Kaito led the way out of the alcove they'd appeared in, scanning for Aoko. Knowing his luck, she'd be out for a day with Mouri and Kudou, and he'd be finding out firsthand if Kudou actually had any inclination here to let their game be called on account of crows—

"Conan-niichan!"

"Conan-niichan!"

Kaito got no further than wondering what kids would be calling Kudou's shrunken form 'niichan' before two high-speed blurs slammed into his legs.

"Where's Ayumi-neechan?"

"Why's your hair like Touichi-kun's today?"

"Who's your friend?"

"He looks kinda like Saguru-jisan, but not old!"

Kaito found himself staring, heart in his throat, at what could have been himself and Kudou transplanted from a decade earlier beaming up at him, except that the boy without messy brown spikes didn't have Kudou's cowlick in the back.

 _:But that's impossible, to go so far upstream time without an anchor,:_ Méraud murmured, bewildered.

"I… I'm not…" _Forget upstream, they said_ _ **Conan**_. _How could Kudou be un-shrunk and still Conan, to make me mistakable for him? I couldn't have messed up so bad to be accidentally ten years_ down _stream_ …

"Touichi! Shinji-kun!" Aoko's familiar voice cut across the mall like a whip crack, and Kaito jerked his head up to find her as the two kids stiffened and darted away. His peripheral vision tracked them as they ran to the quartet of women on the other side of the corridor, but he had eyes only for the woman one of the pair skidded to a halt in front of. The very clearly twenty-something woman, whose eyes were sparking at him with the fire he loved too much to ever forget or mistake. Who had scooped up the boy that no-cowlick had called Touichi-kun, regardless of squawked protests of dignity, and cradled him protectively on one hip.

"Ao-Aoko?"

_Oh Kami-sama, tell me my voice did not just crack._

"Only two people get to call me that. You're too young to be either of them," she snapped.

"A little young, yes, but as for the being…" Another woman stepped forward, and Kaito stomped on a twitch at the bizarre sight of Akako—even cut short, the auburn-violet hair couldn't belong to anyone else—carrying a black-haired toddler who smiled and waved at him with another "Conan-nii!". She crossed to their side of the mall, ignoring Aoko's half-hissed, half-questioning "Akako-chan⁈" and gave them both a kind smile.

"You're a long way from home, aren't you, little birds?"

Kaito gave her a mirthless smile. "You could say that. Are you guys having any problems with someone out of their right mind? It seems to be becoming a theme to find counterparts of ourselves totally screwed over."

 _Maybe because it resonates so much with_ _**us** _ _._

"Oh, Isis, no." Akako smirked, almost cheerfully. "We dealt with all the insanity of Pandora and the Syndicate when we were your age."

Kaito blinked against a growing headache. "Wait… If they're gone, what's all this about 'Conan'? He-ck," he quickly corrected, eyes darting to the little girl in Akako's arms, "what _year_ is it? And where was Pandora? Was it at all related to out-of-their-mindness?"

Akako chuckled. "One question at a time, Kaito-kun, and not here. Though the date is May twenty-fifth, two thousand and twelve."

"Twenty-fi… Oh." _Right. We lost a few days going from the Shadows to the swimming pool, judging by Kudou's mention of how long ago his birthday was._ _So this place is apparently running ten years fast in terms of_ _ **personal**_ _timelines._

He seemed to be out of energy to be surprised anymore, because he processed the news with a sort of numb acceptance.

"Okay. Sure. If you can know what we are without being told, maybe you could help us get home, too. I'm… not doing to well on that front, and we can't figure out why." _And I'm also slowly going crazy, but I never had a tight grip on sanity to begin with, so…_

"Akako-chan, are you sure?" Kaito startled, not having noticed Aoko and the other two women—Mouri and Hattori's friend, Touyama, if he wasn't mistaken—approach with children in tow.

"Oh, yes. Don't worry, Aoko-chan. They're hardly normal, but I'd never expect Kaito-kun, at least, to be that. They're certainly not affiliated with Sharon."

"Sharon?" The question was automatic, until Kaito's brain caught up with his ears. " _Vermouth?_ "

"You've already heard of her, then."

"I can't seem to get _away_ from her," Kaito growled. "Anywhere." _Not my dreams, not reality—such as it is…_

"But you said that the Syndicate is gone," Saguru finally spoke up. "She got away?"

He had a hand on Kaito's shoulder, faint but noticeable. It was almost as if he expected Kaito to try finding Sharon to take her out of the game before she could do something that justified Aoko's paranoia so long after the Syndicate bust.

… Admittedly, it _was_ tempting.

"Unfortunately, yes," Akako replied. "Not even my skills can find her hiding place."

 _But it's possible to take them out. They did it. Hell, if Pandora is also dealt with then_ _ **Kid**_ _is gone, and Aoko…_ Kaito gave Touichi another look and swallowed hard. It was another place, another time, but…

Maybe there could be a happy ending in the cards after all, if they get home.

Which was, of course, the tiny, inconsequential, Mount Fuji sized problem. Aoko was sighing. "Akako-chan, if they're not with Sharon, then what are they? More family we've never heard of is only slightly more believable than Kitsune doppelgangers."

"They're Kaito-kun and Saguru from a different reality, Aoko-chan." Akako frowned. "Even a different Pandora, somehow."

Kaito stopped short. "Wait, what? How can you tell?"

"It's obvious from your aura, Kaito-kun. But more on that later… we should go back to the house."

Mouri smiled, polite if still slightly wary. "At least all the boys are already over for poker."

It said a lot about Kaito's state of mind that even the prospect of poker entirely failed to cheer him up.

"But once we get there, what do we call them?" Touyama seemed to have similar reservations to Mouri, because she had her tag-along, a dark-skinned daughter a few years older than Akako's, also ensconced in her arms. "Having two Kaito-kuns and two Saguru-kuns is just asking for trouble."

_And last names don't work the same when we're ten years younger than everyone._

"Well, for myself, I answer to Steven," Saguru volunteered.

Kaito shrugged. "I can respond to just about anything. Doito Katsuki, Seto Mizuki, Hey you…"

A moment too late, he recognized mischief as it superseded caution in Aoko's eyes. "How about Kai-kun?"

"Gah!" The only person to call him by his childhood nickname any more was his mother, and that was only when he'd done something to worry her. He crossed his arms and glared, albeit half-heartedly. "You're evil."

"I like Kai-niisan!" Akako's daughter cheered.

"And it appears you're doomed," Saguru snickered.

* * *

While the women seemed to still be getting used to the idea of their presence, Akako's seal of approval apparently removed all caution from the children's eyes. On the trip back to Kudou's house, the two boys plus Touyama's daughter, Hanako, cheerfully interrogated Kaito about what sports he played, what movies he liked, his opinion on certain video games, and whether or not he was a detective. (Both boys seemed disappointed when he said he was a magician.)

Akako's daughter, on the other hand, was still mildly breaking Kaito's brain. She crawled from her mother's lap into Saguru's in less time than it took for the bus to leave the stop, and began telling the bemused blond all about her day.

"Does she do that a lot?" Kaito asked Akako, who sat between them, when his interrogation squad hit a lull.

She smirked faintly, eyes curving in amusement. "Akiko-chan is very friendly with everyone, yes."

Kaito started to ask who her father was, but Hanako took advantage of a break in Akiko's monologue to ask Saguru, "Why d'you have gloves on, Steven-niisan? It's not cold."

"And why's there a chain on your sunglasses? Agasa-ojiichan has 'em on his regular glasses, but he's _old_." At Ran's disapproving eye, Shinji added in protest, "He is!"

Saguru chuckled. "My hands are very sensitive, Hanako-chan, and I get cold easily. As for the chain… it was a gift from a friend, so that I don't have to keeping buying a new pair so often."

The kids seemed to accept the half-truth, though Akako gave Saguru a thoughtful look. She didn't say anything, however, before the bus reached the stop for Kudou's house, and then Shinji and Touichi pulled Kaito along with practiced ease, one to an arm. Kaito didn't feel it worth protesting as they led him to the front entrance, using his height advantage to turn the gate-handle too high for them to reach.

The pair plus Hanako had begun discussing the merits of waiting for a key versus picking the lock when Mouri caught up with them, and with a stern look that needed no words, opened the door. "We're home!"

"Welcome home! We're in the study!"

Kaito froze in the genkan, air stolen from his lungs. Even knowing that the voice answering Mouri was Kudou, _had_ to be Kudou, that timbre still belonged foremost to the ghost he'd never entirely put to rest.

_Breathe._

Easier thought than done, but Saguru seemed worried enough about him already; no need to add to it. He forced his feet to keep moving, staying ahead of the detective's gaze as Akako led the way to the study while the others, kids included, paused to set aside the shopping trip's spoils.

Kaito hung back at the doorway, which resulted in a perfect view as Akako swooped down on the player facing mostly away from the door, and pulled an all-too-familiar blond head into a French kiss.

_I need brain bleach._

To a chorus of good-natured ribbing from the other three men, twenty-something Hakuba gave Akako a relaxed, content grin as she pulled back. It was possibly the most openly pleased expression Kaito had seen any version of Saguru, his own included.

"Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"

Akako smirked. "Oh, I just wanted to tease one of our visitors a little. He's an alternate version of you."

"Wha?" Hakuba stared at her for a moment, then whipped his head around to stare at them instead. Kaito snuck a glance over his shoulder at Saguru, who would have looked remarkably free from reaction except for the furious blush suffusing his entire face.

"Damn, that's weird." Eyes darting back to the source of the comment, it was a relief to find that Kudou's neatly combed hair and lack of a mustache differentiated him from Kaito's memories, and that his own unique spikes had failed to tame over the years.

Kaito waved a little. "Hi."

Kuroba mirrored the gesture with a wry smile. "Aren't you a little young to be a storm trooper?"

Kaito shrugged. "Alternate timelines. I only surf channels and do really minor time-skipping."

Akako smoothly stepped in, summarizing their earlier exchange—including the new nicknames, which earned Kaito a theatrical wince and rueful grin from Kuroba—and then added, "They don't have Pandora."

The sudden relief in the room was almost palpable. "Oh thank God," Saguru declared. "That was not a pleasant few months."

"Not most of it, at least," Kudou agreed. "Though I did get a little brother out of the deal."

"Hold it!" Kaito did not like any of the possible implications he was picking up. He pointed at Akako—it was impolite and maybe a little childish but he just didn't _care_. "What do you mean by ' _have'_?"

The dramatic tension of the moment was completely ruined by a young voice piping up from behind him, "Don't shout! An' don't point," an air of primness crept in. "It rude."

He looked down, hand falling to his side. The little girl not-quite-glaring up at him, arms akimbo, was the spitting image of Akiko except for the long brown hair in place of her sister's black bob. He looked back at Akako.

"…Two of them?"

"Twins run in the family," Hakuba answered, as the preschooler ducked into the room and climbed into his lap, a vantage from which she promptly stuck out the tip of her tongue at Kaito. "Though it skipped my generation."

"You're an only child, then?" Saguru asked, almost casually.

"All of my life. If you've kept Steven and have siblings, did mother stay in Japan for you?"

"Wait. Wait-wait-wait," Kaito demanded, not flailing his arms through some effort. "Family comparisons later. Pandora now."

The five adults exchanged glances.

"Shinichi-kun, do you want to field this one with Akako?" Hakuba asked. "I promised Ame she could help us make dinner when everyone returned…"

Kudou nodded, and waved them toward the empty chairs around the poker table as Hakuba carried Ame out of the room. "You'll want to sit down."

"That does not fill me with confidence, Kudou-san." Kaito gestured toward the doorway. "Especially not when that looked suspiciously like a tactical retreat."

Akako sat in Hakuba's vacated chair and crossed her legs, smirking. "You've obviously never tasted his cooking. However," she continued as Kaito glanced at Saguru and received an acknowledging shrug in return, "the time of Volley's passing was perhaps the most unpleasant for him of all of us."

"Why? How? And what does Pandora have to do with Conan still being around?"

"Ahh…" Akako's voice shifted into the half-song of an old-tale storyteller. "Long ago, before recorded history, there was a gem. It had no name – that came later – but it possessed that which was blessing and curse… undying agelessness. Wars were fought and blood spilled over it, until a circle of powerful magic users divided it into four parts and locked it away."

_Knew that, kn—wait, that's new…_

"The legend of the gem grew, and twisted, until it came to the attention of some unpleasant crows and a magician's dove. But they were all looking in the wrong place, for legends are prone to metaphor, and Japanese has no plurals. The gem did not hide in one larger crystal, but in four souls as pure as diamond, passed on to an appropriate new holder when the first died and drawn together until they resided in four souls in Tokyo, seventeen years before the comet's arrival."

Kaito didn't bother squelching an inarticulate exclamation of disgust. "What did it _do?_ "

This time, Kudou answered. "Passive neurochemistry effects, at first. Made us sharper, stronger, faster…" A wan smile. "As it approached, less empathy. Less restraint."

"What 'e means is," Hattori spoke up for the first time, "an idiot murderer tried to take Conan-kun hostage and I broke his arm in three places, and Shinichi-kun made a crazy child murderess snap completely."

"Not our finest hour," Kudou murmured. "And when it got close _enough_ … You could say that the extras in our psyches started taking on lives of their own."

Absurdly, Saguru seemed to almost perk up at the idea. "Some sort of artificially induced Dissociative Identity Disorder?" His brow furrowed. "For Kuroba-kun that would make a certain amount of sense, and possibly even Kudou-san, but…"

_Ha, ha, very funny, it is to laugh._

"It was subtler than that," Akako replied. "A simple tendency towards a personality split, until the gem shards activated—which was also when their eyes glowed, and Pandora nullified the apotoxin so that Shinichi-kun grew up between moonrise and moonset. As to the substance… as you say, Kaito-kun and Shinichi-kun's divisions are easily evident. Heiji-kun simply became… well, somewhat feral. He's always been himself and no one else."

"Damn straight," Heiji agreed with a smirk.

"Saguru… had a more difficult time. He has a tendency to repress, as I'm sure you're aware."

"In passing," Saguru answered dryly.

"Are you familiar with the works of Carl Jung?"

Saguru abruptly paled. "Oh, _hell_."

Kaito slanted a concerned glance Saguru's way, because the blond was pale enough to start with that making his skin tone any whiter took an impressively strong reaction. "Not closely… He was a European psychologist, right?"

"And philosopher, yes. One of his focuses was the concept of archetypes, figures found in the subconscious of all humans…" Akako pursed her lips. "One of those he talked about was the Shadow. While not evil necessarily, it is… everything you reject about yourself. Everything you choose not to be. And with the repression and the influence of Pandora… Saguru's Shadow came to life. As a thief."

_Oh, hell._

"I… see," Saguru murmured thoughtfully.

"Rather less playful than Kid, and quite… manipulative in reaching his goals. But he wanted the same things we all wanted, in the end: Kid alive, and his hunters gone. Once we all realized what was going on—which took some time, luck and research, but we managed—with the help of a little magic, both sides came to an agreement and reintegrated."

"Why didn't that hold true for Kudou-san, then?" Kaito asked. "The nature of the shrinkage interfered?"

Kudou grinned. "Good to see you're still sharp even without a dormant shard. The drug was only being suppressed when Pandora was active, so when we tried to make the cure permanent…"

Akako finished, "He already considered Conan-kun a separate person, and all that shunted energy from the drug had to go somewhere… Thus, Conan-kun."

"So there's two of you now?" Kaito suppressed a shudder. Visiting was all well and good, but to have a permanent doppelganger stuck ten years younger _forever_ …

"No… there's me, and there's Conan. He has no memory of the transformation, only twisted and warped memories from the year I was Conan. As far as he knows, the Edogawas relinquished parental rights when he was hospitalized by the accident that gave him amnesia, and my parents adopted him afterward."

"Logical, in a twisted sort of way," Saguru acknowledged thoughtfully.

"And luckily for him, the death-magnet status stayed with me. The Shounen Tantei stuck to lost cats and thefts until they were old enough to be the Gakuen Tantei and apprenticed at the Four Kings Agency under us."

Much as he appreciated the name, Kaito looked at Kuroba. "…You didn't become a professional magician?"

Kuroba grinned. "I keep my skills up to par, but after Kid it didn't seem like enough of an adrenaline rush. We made Four Kings Agency as an investigation _and_ security firm, so now I get paid to break through security systems." The grin softened. "I decided I'd been dad's ghost long enough. I don't have to be on stage to enjoy it, or to pass it on—the tantei apprenticed for my skill set, too. Genta-kun's surprisingly fast with his hands."

"Oh. Um… does their number include Kenta-kun?"

The adults exchanged glances. "Connery's son?" Kuroba asked. "No, he had relatives in England who took him in. Why?"

"Huh. Maybe they hadn't been found yet or they just don't exist back home. When we left, Aoko was determined to foster Kenta-kun until any family could be contacted and adopt him if he didn't have anyone else."

Kuroba chuckled. "Good luck with that."

"Yeah, well, Hakuba-kun gave her Ran-san's phone number just before we left, so we'll find out what happened when we finally get back."

_And hope like hell our welcome home won't involve tranquilizer—_

_:Kaito-kun, if I tell you that we have some answers, do you have time to talk right now?:_

"Ngh!" Kaito was definitely too stressed, because the unexpected voice of Méraud was enough to prompt a full-body twitch out of his nerves.

"Kuroba-kun?" Saguru sounded concerned.

"That was…" Akako had straightened in her chair, giving him a piercing look. "Kai-kun, just how strong _is_ your affinity for the Shadows? That felt like a Presence."

"Um…" Kaito rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know what you'd call a presence, but I've been sort of adopted by a Shadow Dragon and Shadow Magician."

_If those are even the right terms for them, because Duel Monsters won't mean anything here._

_:They'll do,:_ came Lupin's amused purr. _:Akako is one of your friends? She_ _ **is**_ _a fun one to play with.:_

… _I don't want to know._

_:She occasionally tries to summon a power of chaos… I answer her questions under the moniker 'Lucifer' before her inquiries take her beyond the Shadow Realm to the real thing, who is far less benign…:_

Kaito tried to not think too hard about that, beyond the fact that he _had_ been right about Akako's affinity for Egypt and conversation partners.

_But you just talk to me. In my head. No summon necessary._

_:You promise to be more interesting than anyone I've met in years.:_

Someone, Kaito realized belatedly, was also talking _outside_ his head.

"…zones out sometimes, yes, it's a side effect of when they talk to him…"

"Isis and Hathor," Akako breathed. "Does he have any idea what honor it is to be on voluntary speaking terms with a Presence? To be under their protection?"

Kaito grumbled, "A, I'm sure you can tell me, B, I have to summon them to get them into our side of reality—"

_:There are exceptions to every rule, young one.:_

"— _Méraud_ can't sustain herself here without a summon, and C, sometimes they talk during really inconvenient times."

_:Is this one?:_

_No, not re—_ Kaito stopped, gauging his energy levels. "Can I summon Méraud? I think she and Koizumi-san should talk, at least, and I prefer talking aloud than in my head."

Saguru raised an eyebrow. "Will you pass out again if you do? You made a rift not two hours ago."

"I woke up not three hours ago. I think I can manage to keep it at 'needing breakfast'. Or at this point, dinner like Hakuba-san said."

"Will Méraud-san fit in the room?" Akako inquired, eyes gleaming faintly.

"I think so, if she's medium-size. Here…" He grabbed his side deck from his belt, answering Akako's curious look with, "The cards are focuses. It's easier to make the Shadows do what I want with them."

Luster Dragon was the sixth card down, beneath the hand he'd used last night. A twist of will, _-reaching_ \- for the Shadows—dammit, why couldn't their corner of reality be more Shadow-dense?—and a whole lot concentration later, Méraud sat on her haunches in the middle of the floor, somewhere between a large dog and a small horse. It would save a bit of energy to make her smaller, but if he did that he suspected Akako would mutter things about proper respect at him later.

Kaito wasn't positive, but he thought he might have heard Kuroba murmur under his breath, "She's _shiny…_ "

Méraud smiled pleasantly at the group, if a dragon's bared teeth could look pleasant. ":Hello, Akako-kun. Kaito-kun hopes your knowledge of magic and our knowledge of the Shadows will be enough to get him home.:"

"Welcome and well met, Méraud-san," Akako replied formally. "Do you concur?"

":We can but hope. As to the substance… There is a Shadow-thread connected to Kaito. Can you see it?":

Akako nodded. "I thought it part of what allows them travel. Is it not?"

":It came later, but the two are… related." Méraud's head swung back to meet Kaito's eyes. ":As you prepare and open a Shadowrift, it pulses. And I wanted to be certain before mentioning it, but Lupin-san agrees… it behaves the same during your dreams."

… _They're real._

 _**He's** _ _real._

 _Oh, Kami-sama, they're_ _**real** _ _…_

The words pounded a deafening litany through Kaito's head as he stared at Méraud, too frozen to manage any reply. People spoke, but he couldn't hear them properly, couldn't hear anything but the sound of his lungs desperately reaching for air because a vise held his chest and his heart and his stomach in unforgiving ice and he couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't _breathe…_

A glove clamped onto the back of his neck and shook him where he sat. "Kuroba-kun! Look at me."

The other glove turned his head for him, until Saguru's face came into view. He was glaring. Or at least had his eyes narrowed, it was kinda hard to tell the two apart. And the edges of the room were starting to grey but he still couldn't get enough air so why—

" _Breathe. Slowly._ On my count. In, two, three, and hold…" the blond kept counting, and Kaito latched onto the new focus with the desperation of a… very desperate thing. Person. Self.

Eventually his breathing evened out enough for Saguru's satisfaction, and the blond sat back slightly with a sigh, dropping the hand on Kaito's face. "All right?"

He nodded, feeling the glove still on his neck shift with the motion. He wasn't, not by a long shot, but he wasn't going to break down any further with an audience. "Thanks. …Sorry."

And Méraud was gone. He must have dropped the summon accidentally while he was busy hyperventilating.

"You're entitled. I've only seen him from the outside, and that's bad enough."

Akako had her head cocked thoughtfully, watching them. "Dreams?"

When Kaito glanced back at him, then away, Saguru's hand tightened briefly and he answered her. "For the past several weeks, Kuroba-kun has had connected nightmares of a place where he was witness to Touichi-san's death, and Vermouth took him to be hers."

The ensuing spate of foul language was quiet, out of deference to children elsewhere in the house, but no less vehement for it. Kaito took advantage of the pause to re-summon Méraud. Concentrating on keeping her present was more pleasant than processing the new information.

Méraud, for her part, looked apologetic when she reappeared. ":I am sorry, Kaito-kun. From the way it vanishes into the Shadows, we believe it is connected to someone or something in that place, like a tether of some sort, or a fishing line.:"

… _Reel the catch in. Ugh, fish, no sympathizing with cold slimy scales and dead eyes._

"…Wait." A niggling discrepancy offered itself to attempt to prove Méraud wrong. "My first nightmare was before I even met you, before any of this…" he waved a hand vaguely, "Shadow-travel."

":But not before your first travels through the Dark,:" Méraud reminded quietly. ":Some Shadow-adepts can reach through the Darkness, as well. Theoretically, a minor connection could have been possible, and then firmly rooted when you entered the wild Shadows themselves."

Kaito's mental response was unprintable.

"I would say your conjecture of some _one_ is likely more accurate than some _thing_ ," Akako offered. "That sort of active pulse indicates a mind and purpose behind the observed phenomena, not simple chance."

The convulsive laugh that bubbled up from Kaito must not have sounded good, because it garnered several concerned looks from adults and dragon, and more pressure on the back of his neck. Pressure was good. It reminded his hindbrain that _his_ Saguru wasn't dead, even if he remembered pulling the trigg—No, bad thoughts. Bad thoughts to be locked up in tiny mental boxes and thrown away with their mental keys, except that didn't work so well when _someone else_ had a skeleton key to cancel his Kami-given gifts of repression and denial and crap, he was laughing again.

He clamped down on it, teeth snapping shut into a pathetic poker face of a smile. But if he didn't smile, he was going to either laugh or scream himself hoarse. "At least someone being out to get me isn't new. And this isn't just some bad cosmic joke on me."

Méraud's tail flicked around her haunches in apparent agitation. ":No. But while we can say that the thread appears to be pulling your aim off course, towards that place… we can't be certain how to break that connection.:"

"If I may…" Akako interjected. "Magic of this caliber would be essentially impossible to break on this end. The power would need to be dispelled at the source."

Kaito gave her a blank look. "…You want me to go there."

She nodded, grimly sympathetic but implacable. "I've been studying the thread since Méraud-san brought it up, and it is beyond my not inconsiderable abilities to break. Whoever did this… they're very skilled."

"And you want me to go to them and say, 'Hi, you've been making my dreams a living hell for the past month now, could you please stop that or at least tell me what you want so I can go home?'"

"Roughly put, but… something needs to change for you, Kai-kun, and soon. And strong though your unknown antagonist might be, you have two powerful Presences on your side."

":Well, I don't know about powerful,:" Méraud demurred.

: _She's far too modest,:_ Lupin chuckled. _:I maintain no such illusions.:_

That was… mildly comforting, actually.

"Okay, so I track them down and threaten to sic a rampaging dragon on them if they don't stop with the sanity-eating."

Saguru smiled. "That sounds satisfying."

"If it works."

":We'll make certain of it,:" Méraud replied. ":It's high time for you to return home.:"

"Though not quite yet," Akako added, smirk reappearing. "Steven-kun and I need to talk, first."

Saguru tensed slightly, hand dropping from Kaito's neck to interlace fingers with the other one. "On what subject, Koizumi-san?"

She gestured at said hands. "You have multiple signs of an untrained psychic ability, Steven-kun. If you don't trust yourself enough to leave your hands bare, I can't in good conscience let you both run off to confront your mystery villain."

"…Oh. Bugger."

"How come it's so new?" Hattori asked, curious. "Is late-manifesting magic common where you're from?"

"…No. I had successfully insulated myself until I met Kuroba-kun and… a lot of things happened." A shrug. "I've had some basic training, but little mental reserves at the time we left to deal with another problem and there's simply been no time to do more than a few exercises here and there… and I've been loath to test my limits without someone nearby who knows what they're doing."

There were nods of understanding from around the table.

"Take it from me," Kudou offered, "Akako-kun counts. You two can work on that after dinner."

"Ah… thank you," Saguru answered when Akako nodded. "And for your hospitality, as well."

"You both look like hell," came Kudou's blunt assessment. "Shadow friends or no, you need to take a day to recover before you go anywhere. How long has it been since you took a breather from dealing with problems and trying to get home?"

"Um…" Kaito glanced at Saguru. Saguru raised his eyebrows.

"You are not allowed to count anything that occurred after the ruby heist as downtime."

_Crap._

"Ha~kuba-kun," Kaito protested. "What about the Motou's?"

"One morning and two night's sleep out of three days of whirlwind does not count. And previous to that was, by your own admission, one and a half weeks on a sum total of _fifty-two hours_ of sleep."

"There were more important things!"

"And I thought I was bad," Kuroba commented.

"You are," Kudou snarked back. "So how long ago was that heist?"

Kaito massaged his forehead. "We've been trying to get home for four or five days, I think? If you go by times slept. So… two, two and a half weeks? With three weeks of crazy before that, and a few days in between."

"…You had two days before the ruby heist, going from the timing of your note. I'm certain you spent most of it preparing. That puts you at _six weeks_ without a rest worth speaking of, Kuroba-kun."

"Oh." It felt both shorter and longer. Apparently he'd been so busy living it that he'd sort of forgotten to pace himself.

"Right, then," Kudou declared. "You two are staying put for at least the next 48 hours."

"What? But…" Kaito bristled at the order, but Saguru shook his head.

"He's right. We've had so many distractions that I didn't calculate it out before, or I would have said something sooner. Regardless of how bloody hyperkinetic you are, you need to _rest._ "

"I…"

Méraud leaned over to nudge his head with her rough, emerald-scaled nose. ":Stubbornness does not substitute for sense, young one. It does no good to be flexible and iron-willed if both are pushed past the breaking point.:" Silently, she added, : _Solomon-kun's tea will let you sleep. Use the haven you've been offered and regain your equilibrium.:_

Kaito looked between Méraud, Saguru, and Kudou. They'd really only been gone from home just over a week… and automatic rebellion against authority aside, procrastinating the inevitable sounded very, very good right now.

"If you're sure you don't mind the intrusion… Okay."

Kuroba grinned. "If you want to repay us, take the kids out to the park tomorrow and ride herd with the Gakuen Tantei. We're celebrating Touichi and Shinji-kun's birthdays, and need them out of the house to set it up."

"Birthdays?"

Kuroba nodded. "Touichi turned six on Monday and Shinji-kun's birthday is the day after tomorrow. We always split the difference with the weekend between."

_No wonder the boys look like tantei-kun at the Black Pearl heist._

More important than that, though… "What will you tell the teenagers about us?"

"The truth," Kudou answered. "The boys already heard it and aren't about to forget."

"Besides," Heiji added, "if we don't, they're just gonna figure it out anyway before the weekend is over."

Kudou snorted. "True. We taught them too well."

The sound of small feet running on wood precluded any response. Shinji and Touichi burst into the room, announcing that dinner was ready, then skidded to a halt at the sight of Méraud.

"You have a _dragon?_ " Shinji breathed, awed.

"That's even cooler than Akako-obasan's _snakes!_ " Touichi agreed, wide-eyed.

"Where did he come from?"

"Can we pet him?"

"Can we play with him?"

"Boys!" Kudou's stern admonition cut through the tag-teamed barrage of questions, and they fell silent, though more expectant than repentant.

Kaito had to smile at them. "Her name's Méraud, and I'll ask her _after_ dinner if you ask politely."

They grinned, and chorused, "Pleeeease!"

Méraud ducked her head to their eye-level, showing off her profile as she eyed them first from one side and then the other. ":We'll see how Kai-kun feels later, because it takes his energy to keep me here.:"

Akako, Kaito noted with faint amusement, looked what might pass for her as scandalized at the informality. And possible future indignity for Méraud.

 _:She's accustomed to our kind having much more pride, deserved or not,:_ Lupin chuckled.

_Just as well Méraud's informal. Dignity doesn't tend to last long around me._

_:I heard that, Kaito-kun,:_ Méraud replied. _:And everyone is getting up to leave, by the way.:_

_Ack!_

Kaito refocused on his surroundings to see that she was right, and also that she wasn't in the study any longer.

 _Wait. You can dismiss yourself?_ he asked, splitting concentration enough to follow the others out of the study without running into walls.

_:Any Monster worth our salt can break a summoning. How else would we keep ourselves from being misused like mere tools?:_

… _Point._

Méraud seemed content to leave the conversation there, and Kaito re-emerged into the world outside of his head in time to be his usual charming self to the rest of the house's inhabitants. Aoko and the others seemed to come around fairly quickly amidst the good food and better company, though occasionally he caught Aoko giving him an unreadable look. Which was weird, because he was used to being the inscrutable one between the two of them.

He caught bits of Saguru's conversation with Hakuba, but mostly was too busy inhaling the meal like a kitsune with fried tofu and trying to get into Aoko's head to pay much attention to the family comparisons. As the dishes were cleared, all five kids approached Kaito's seat, with various expressions of winningly adorable.

"Méraud promised after dinner we could play with her, Kai-niisan," Touichi prompted.

_Funny, that's not what I heard._

_:He has your talent for interpretation. I… would not mind if you felt it would not be too difficult…:_

"Please!" the kids added in unison.

Before Kaito could reply one way or the other, Aoko stepped in. "Not right now, all of you. I need to talk to Kai-kun first."

With a promise of seeing Méraud later, if they were still awake, the disappointed gang moved on to try snagging Saguru. Kaito expected a similar rebuff from Akako, but instead she smiled.

"Go get your favorite toys and meet us in the den to play." As the miniature mob cheered and ran off, she answered Saguru's predictably raised eyebrow with, "Children are wonderfully simple when it comes to emotion. Unrefined, uncomplicated, and unrestrained—sorting through subtlety comes after you can withstand strength."

"Oh dear. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained…" Saguru followed Akako out of the room without protest, leaving Kaito alone with Aoko.

"Is something wrong, Aoko…san?"

Her lips quirked upward in a half-kind, half-rueful smile. "First, I wanted to apologize for snapping at you before. I'm always a little on edge this time of year, and it's worse this time with Touichi being the same age Conan-kun was before…"

Kaito smiled back, a bit mechanically. "Forgiven. I understand why you would be worried." _She has the patience of a dragon, a flair for the dramatic, and a vindictive streak. And I wish I didn't know that._

"Thank you. As for the other…" She shook her head, smile turning wry. "You still haven't told her, have you."

Kaito eyed her dubiously. "…No."

"Did you leave her watching 'Captain E.T.' alone? She saw Akako-chan give you that alibi to use with Saguru-kun?"

"…Yes…"

She chuckled. _Chuckled._ "Then unless we're very different, she already knows, Kai-kun."

Several levels of mental processes previously occupied with figuring out Aoko's purpose for the discussion ground to a screeching halt. "…What?"

"The theater was dark, but an inflatable dummy only works when it can't be touched, baka."

"Oh." At least she seemed to be smiling in fond exasperation, not angry. But that amusement park visit had been _months_ ago…

"When I realized you'd gone off anyway… it hurt. But I also know you wouldn't have become Kid unless it was important. And I was right."

He had a million questions, but the most pressing one came out on its own. "If you—if she knows, why hasn't she _said_ anything?"

"If she did, would you have believed her?"

"…Maybe."

"Which is your way of saying that you would have wanted to, but couldn't risk it being a trick to catch you again."

"…It's disturbing when you do that."

"I have years of practice reading you. And it _did_ still hurt, Kai-kun. You were shutting me out the way you did… everyone else but me, until then. Even when I tried to be patient, Kid was stealing you and my father away from me, one day at a time. I hated Kid for making dad look incompetent until I realized that you did that to everyone who chased you, no matter what."

Aoko shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I suppose what I wanted you to understand is… You don't have to stand alone. There are people willing to stand with you, if only you'll let them." She gave him another smile, soft and bittersweet. "I loved Toichi-ojisan too."

After a long moment, Kaito forced a nod, not trusting himself to speak.

"You don't have to make any decisions until after you get home, of course… I just hope you'll think about it." She reached out and lightly touched his arm, then stood and withdrew.

Kaito sat in the empty dining room after she was gone, listening to the muffled voices of adults in the kitchen and children in the den, and pondered the idea that _not_ telling Aoko could, conceivably, hurt her worse than hearing the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, Kaito has watched Loony Tunes. And read Schlock Mercenary. They're good English practice.


	8. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, Saguru and Kaito's perspectives refer to the native inhabitants by their last names, and each other by their first names. The natives refer to each other by first names and the travelers by Kai and Steven.
> 
> This chapter includes a chess game described in algebraic notation. N = Knight, K = King, B = Bishop, Q = Queen, R = Rook, no letter = pawn, and x = the move captures an opponent's piece. Letter-number refers to the target square of the move.

_Footfalls echo in the memory_  
_Down the passage which we did not take_  
_Towards the door we never opened_  
_Into the rose-garden. My words echo_  
_Thus, in your mind._  
~Burnt Norton (I.11-15)

* * *

Saguru had to breathe a sigh of relief when Kaito agreed to stay put for a few days—Kaito had no inkling what the phrase "pace yourself" meant. Not to mention they'd been traveling at breakneck speed, and that primarily through public spaces or otherwise unknown territory, which required being almost exclusively on high alert.

Consequently, the welcome distraction of dinner gave Saguru the chance to remove his gloves and sunglasses for the first time since waking up at the detective agency, five hours and twenty-three minutes ago. Even their relatively thin material interfered with dexterity more than he liked, and crockery, at least, should be free of nasty surprises. The number of people present was more than slightly daunting, but he had to at least _try_.

He carefully peeled off the gloves during the general bustle of relocation, reached for the sunglasses perched on his head, hesitated, then sighed and pocketed them.

 _Breathe. Concentrate. Don't get lost, don't get **eaten**_ —

_{Breath of cobwebs clinging in the dark, glistening in stale air—}_

_{Firelight crackling in the evening, warmth and safety and guidance home—}_

_{Inquisitive moths gathering, seeking, countless soft wings beating—}_

Oh, no, he would _not_ give in so easily—

_Kasparov vs Topalov 1999, Kasparov's Immortal: d4, d6; e4, Nf6; Nc3, g6..._

He concentrated on the pattern of the chess game like a shield, trying to drown out the flood of new input, or at least keep it at a manageable distance. Even without high intensities there were so _many_ sources, swirling and dancing and happily dumping far more sense-images than he wanted to face down simultaneously directly into his brain. Though not quite enough to trigger a complete overload. Yet.

Kaito didn't call him a stubborn bastard for nothing, however, and this was _important_. He only had two days to convince Koizumi that he was functional enough to leave. Neither Kaito's urgency to move on nor Koizumi's… personality boded well, should the two end up clashing.

He tucked the gloves into his bag—paranoia had kept the bag close and his coat on through the previous discussion in the study—and dropped the lot beside Kaito's bag on the way to the Western-style dining room. Hakuba waved Saguru over to the end of the table dominated by blondish-brown hair; he sat across from Hakuba and diagonally to Koizumi, with the twins sharing the corner between their parents.

An amused smirk lit Koizumi's face as she took note of his new lack of accessories. "Oh, they can come off after all?"

Saguru deliberately smiled back, throwing _F3, b5; Ne2, Nd7_ at the surge of _{subtle glint of sharp points in even vixen's friendliest grin}._ "When there is minimal risk that something might overwhelm me without them. Keeping Kuroba-kun sane and intact is prohibitively difficult when my own sanity is under siege. Under the current circumstances, however, I hardly think anything malevolent will leap out of the soup."

"Unlikely," Hakuba agreed, "though I wouldn't want to put Murphy to the test."

"Daddy, what's a murphy?" Ame inquired innocently, echoed by Akiko.

While Hakuba attempted to formulate a comprehensible answer for two preschoolers, Koizumi smoothly interjected with a mildness Saguru definitely didn't trust _{smooth, considering prowl, razor-edge gleam of white still bared in amusement—for the moment…},_ "What do you consider a sufficient risk to justify wearing your armor? Since a bus ride in public and a private group discussion obviously both meet your criteria."

Saguru kept the placid smile firmly in place. "My difficulties aside, before Kuroba-kun agreed to stay there remained a chance that we could depart abruptly. I prefer to be prepared, as there are fewer unpleasant surprises that way."

Exponentially growing Heartless mobs was one of the exceptions.

"Hnn." Koizumi remained unimpressed. _Bh6_ , _Bxh6; Qxh6, Bb7._

The conversation paused as the meal began, before Hakuba inquired, "How long has your sensitivity been an issue? You mentioned that it was dormant for quite a while..."

Saguru offered a wry smile. "According to my pocket watch, since travel with Kuroba-kun wreaks havoc on the internal clock and I'm positive he cheated an extra day without me? Two hours and seventeen minutes shy of six full days. We keep skipping from the morning of one place to the afternoon of another, though so much keeps _happening_ it feels easily twice as long."

Koizumi narrowed her eyes. "How long did you work with the one who gave you the gloves and sunglasses?"

"Mmm... Approximately twelve hours total between our arrival and departure, though he only gave me the gloves. Kuroba-kun made the sunglasses himself."

Seeing her expression remain unchanged over _{subterranean water rushing, boiling, pounding at the surface}_ , Saguru felt compelled to add, with an extra edge of charming smile and a mental snarl of _a3, e6,_ "They were obviously intended as emergency measures. There simply hasn't been time or opportunity for much of anything more comprehensive. Our acquaintance certainly tried his best in the interval he had at his disposal, but twelve hours to learn, and perhaps that much again to practice... there is only so much one can pick up in that time."

Other than the desire to curl up in a corner and tell the rest of universe to bugger off, of course. Loudly, repeatedly, and damn but his equilibrium did not last long in a crowd—even a tiny one—even _knowing_ that nothing pounding at him was actually _his_.

 _Castle: queen's side_ , _Qe7._

She inclined her head just slightly, the barest hint of acknowledgment as the _{rush of water}_ receded into the overall surrounding noise. "What do you have without your... protective equipment, then?"

Saguru took a moment to savor some miso soup, putting his thoughts in order. Solomon-san hadn't been the fool she seemed to want to assume he was, he'd just... been forced to prioritize. Rather drastically. There had been so _much_ to compress into so very little time just to keep his new sensitivity from uncontrollably crippling him.

"The basic problem is that at the moment, everything is too intense. Without the assistance of, ah, 'protective equipment' to help dampen the sensations to a tolerable level, the best I can do is try to ignore them by concentrating on something else. It's a little like one does with ringing in the ears, I suppose, when the sound itself cannot be eliminated. Rather than trying to suppress it, find a way to hold it at arm's length, to keep from being swamped. I've done what I can to improve my tolerance, but we tend to switch between emotional hurricanes and large crowds and no company at all. This is—a group this large, that is—is about the limit of what I can handle, at the moment."

"I can see that," Koizumi said dryly. "Stop being hung up on your pride and put the daft glasses back on until after dinner."

He glared, just a little. "I beg your pardon?"

"If you keep this up, you're going to be exhausted and useless for anything _productive_ by the time we're done talking. Put them on."

"I'd do what she says, myself," Hakuba broke in with a smile and a wave of _{brook over stones-worn-smooth, laughter running in place}._ "You'll be happier that way."

Pride wrestled with fatigue.

Fatigue won.

Saguru retrieved the sunglasses and settled them in his hair. The world instantly muffled into blessed quiet, and whole muscle groups he hadn't noticed had been taut as coiled springs relaxed. He let the chess-match memory dissolve with a sigh.

Koizumi smiled in knowing satisfaction. "Better. Go on."

Saguru took another long moment to breathe, then shrugged, raising one index finger to tap the frame of the sunglasses over his temple. "If you're asking about what I know... As I'm sure you can tell, the bronze in these acts to help block out... well, whatever's in the vicinity. The gloves physically prevent the amplification effects of direct contact—you might call that psychometry, I suppose, since it's at least an order of magnitude more powerful than sensations from any distance—and the bronze threads in them similarly dampen whatever might be emanating from objects I have to handle. As far as I've been able to tell, any impressions I pick up do seem to correspond in at least some manner to how others feel."

He shuddered as his mind skittered away from memories.

"Impressions? What sort of impressions?" Koizumi's eyes narrowed in what he rather hoped was merely interest.

"It's..." Saguru hesitated for a moment, trying to find words for the experience. "I suppose it might be easiest to think of it as a bit like having someone else's dream imposed upon you, while you're awake—an uncontrollable sort of tangle of image and feel and association."

"So you don't experience them like they're your own emotions, then."

"No, not at all. It's definitely an external sensation, not... emotion per se."

Koizumi tapped a finger against her cheek. "Hmm. Well, at least this emergency teacher of yours had enough sense to try for ignoring, rather than outright blocking or suppressing things yourself—that would have risked damaging you in a variety of ways, eventually. I'm sure we can do far better for you here and now, of course."

"...Thank you," Saguru conceded after a moment. He did need whatever help he could get.

"It'll take a little while, of course, but we should be able to get you started in the right direction and give you some actual preparation before dropping you in the deep end. What does—hmm, no, if you're this sensitive—as a baseline, then, while you still have your dampeners on, what does it feel like to you if you, oh, say, touch someone's hand during casual conversation?"

Saguru hesitated, remembering the mob of Heartless they didn't particularly want to bring up here. The knowledge would lead to far too many other questions they preferred to avoid. "Under normal circumstances, with the glasses on, nothing definite unless I concentrate. I mostly wear both glasses and gloves for redundancy in case... something happens."

A chain was not the most secure of devices, but welding bronze to his skull was not exactly a viable alternative.

Koizumi considered briefly. "Without either, then."

Saguru hesitated. "It depends on what they're feeling."

"Such as? Pick an example."

He sighed. It seemed quite clear that she was not going to stop calmly pressing for more information until she got what she considered to be a satisfactory level of detail, but—

"I'm... truly not entirely sure how to explain it. It's not something that's easy to put into words." In any language. "When I even try, the description comes out... flat, almost. As though it's missing the full impact that it should be carrying—a bit like how I could tell you that something gives me the impression of a waterfall, and you'll think of a photograph or a poster, or a view from a safe distance. But that's not what it's like at all. It's the difference between a photograph or a description, and actually being there in the middle of it all: the slipperiness of moss and rock, the shock of cold air on your skin, the mist hitting you wet and clammy in the face, the roar of the water, the inexorable strength of the current rushing down and down, to break on the rocks below—" he broke off, shaking his head.

Koizumi's gaze had gone dark and intent, and the twins were watching in wide-eyed silence. "That wasn't really a hypothetical example, was it."

No more than that had actually been a question. Saguru swallowed, shoving down the memories of that first terrible grab at Riku in the Darkness Corridor and the first aftermath of viewing Kaito's twisted nightmare.

"Perhaps not as much as I would like," he managed.

She regarded him for a long, thoughtful moment before asking, a little more softly, "So what produced that impression, then? It seems to have been... memorable."

Saguru hesitated, trying to figure out how to untangle that particular sense-image from all the others that had deluged him then, most of which he did not particularly want to think about too closely. Delving after anything more specific than "Yes it happened and was predominately _unpleasant"_ had an unfortunate tendency to cause immersive flashbacks, and he wasn't enthused by the prospect of skirting that cliff edge.

"I... don't know. Not precisely. It's not a memory I can pick at without being... pulled back in."

"I see." There was, perhaps, a bit of sympathy in her eyes and her voice stayed that shade quieter. "What was the general situation, then?"

He shrugged faintly "An overwhelming combination of negative emotions. What I just described wasn't the only image, you see, simply one of the strongest. If I were to venture a guess, however... perhaps guilt, or horror."

She nodded, contemplative. "Well, it's a start. I'll think on what to work on first—there's so much, after all..."

After she trailed off, Saguru took the opportunity to eat the rest of his dinner. The food really was quite good, and he thought he recognized Baaya's unique approach to curry flavoring in the main dish. When Hakuba didn't have the twins distracting him, they even managed to have a pleasant, if sporadic, conversation comparing family trees. Hakuba's had been surprisingly sparse as an only child with only a mother and grandmother in England, but the absence of three uncles and a younger brother explained why he'd been so much more willing to stay in Japan permanently. Saguru was still trying to not think too hard about what would happen after he got back home. There didn't seem to be a way around disappointing _someone_ unless Mother could be convinced to move back to Japan, and Saguru still wasn't sure how much he wanted to try that until at least Kudou's flock of crows was taken care of—and if Kaito's stalkers were the same organization, so much the better _._ But introducing leverage onto the game board just before starting a serious gambit was poor strategy indeed.

Saguru's thoughts were interrupted by Touichi and Shinji accosting Kaito further down the table, and he realized he'd been staring into empty dishes for the last few minutes. Dinner was over.

And Koizumi was enlisting _all five children_ to assist in his practice session. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she smiled in return. "Children are wonderfully simple when it comes to emotion. Unrefined, uncomplicated, and unrestrained—sorting through subtlety comes after you can withstand strength."

"Oh dear." But damned if he was going to say he wasn't willing to try it. "Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained…"

He followed Koizumi to the den, where she settled onto the couch and added, "Really, I wouldn't consider you properly prepared until your mind is adapted enough to process the input as you do sight or touch—not hiding behind walls, bronze or invisible. It's supposed to be another sense, not a complete liability."

"I gathered as much, judging by your earlier objections," Saguru murmured dryly. "But surely a learning curve is to be expected?"

"Steven-niisan!" Touichi, Shinji, and Hanako raced into the room, interrupting the conversation. "We brought cards!" Shinji announced with a hint of glee.

"You'll play poker with us, right?" Touichi continued. "Akiko-chan and Ame-chan can't remember the hands right, and Hanako-chan only plays a few rounds before getting bored."

"Because I can hardly ever beat you two idiots!" Hanako protested.

Koizumi smiled benevolently. "I think that sounds like a fine idea. Hanako-chan, why don't you ask Steven-kun if he'll play as a team with you?"

Hanako, Saguru had to admit, had the art of begging eyes down pat. "Will you, Steven-niisan?"

"Yes, of course…" Saguru settled on the floor near Koizumi with his back against the couch, then looked up as the twins trotted in, Ame carrying a brightly-covered book and Akiko with a plastic case full of crayons.

"We're gonna color!" Ame announced to the room, and with no prompting the pair settled on the other side of Koizumi's feet and spread out their supplies. Saguru blinked a little at the degree of good behavior in two three-year-olds, looked back at Koizumi's tiny knowing smile, and chose not to comment. He suspected there would be at least one argument over colors and crayon-ownership sooner or later, though, because they were still siblings.

Saguru was distracted by Hanako sliding into his lap, automatically shifting a bit to accommodate her. She stuck out her tongue at the boys. "We're gonna win!"

"Nuh-uh!" Shinji countered.

"Uh-huh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Touichi looked at Saguru as the debate continued, rolled his eyes, and proceeded to deal. Saguru chuckled briefly, before the memory of why he was sitting there in the first place resurfaced, and he went after his glasses again with a soft sigh. He startled slightly when a hand suddenly gripped his shoulder —thankfully not his wrist, which was bare without his coat on—but when he turned, Koizumi smiled at him and then grabbed the sunglasses for herself, settling them atop her hair.

"You don't need me adding complication right now, wouldn't you say?" she asked.

He blinked, staring a little, as it sank in that in the few seconds it had taken her to put them on, the room had felt distinctly louder and more complex. Now... it wasn't quite as bad as he had feared. _{Kitten-purr, claw-prickle and scentmark and climb to explore}_ vied for attention with _{Breeze over sun-warmed stone and dirt, flowers waving under leaf-rustle}_ and the _{Firelight crackling in home's hearth}_ he'd vaguely processed before. They were still strong, but it was the difference of half a dozen speakers each loudly playing a different song, and thirty speakers blaring as many distinct ensemble pieces at full blast.

Of course, half a dozen was still enough to need some distance to avoid having the part of him that felt human lost into a jumble of waking dreams. He had left off... yes. _Kb1, a6; Nc1, castle: queen's side._

"Steven-niisan, are you paying attention?" Hanako waved a hand in front of his face, cards clutched tightly in the other. "We're first!"

"Ah, my apologies." He made an effort to focus on the cards and suggested which ones to replace—with no betting materials, the game of choice was Five Card Draw. As the round continued, he went back to only halfway paying attention, because there was so much else to focus on. He was going to get a headache eventually, but... eventually, not right now. He could stand it for now, and might be able to pick the images apart with more success than previous experiences. Later.

The time went by rather pleasantly, all things considered. Quite a few rounds had passed in counterpoint to the mental chess match replay when Saguru realized abruptly that Shinji's fingers had moved oddly as he'd dealt out the new hands—a movement Saguru recognized after a moment as a slightly clumsy version of dealing off the bottom of deck. Which, upon further consideration, he concluded had also been present more subtly in Touichi's deals.

Oh, to be a competitive six-year-old with an in-game advantage. But perhaps the fruits of being an obsessive teenager would be sufficient to counter their trick, because no study of Kid could be complete without a study of his methods... and card and coin tricks had been the easiest way to try understanding the entertainer mindset.

"If I may?" he asked in a carefully mild tone when Hanako next took possession of the deck, offering an upturned palm. "It's hardly fair to make you do all the dealing for our team."

She shrugged, her initial enthusiasm worn down even though luck had granted them a few victories here and there.

"Thank you." He wasn't much better than Shinji, all told, but it was enough. Shuffle the cards just so, hold the deck precisely, and deal. Both boys noticed, judging by the sudden piercing sensation of _{bird startled out of the brush}—Ra7, Bb7; Rxb7, Qc4—_ and twin looks of badly hidden surprise.

Saguru set the deck in its place on the floor, but left his hand covering the cards as he regarded them.

"The most important thing about learning to cheat," he murmured, "is to know when to use it. I'm sure if your fathers taught you, they said that the only appropriate times are against someone else who also knows how so you can both practice, or against someone who truly deserves it. Am I right?"

" _What?_ " Hanako's shrill outrage alone would have been enough to set Saguru's head throbbing due to close proximity, even without the spike of _{rushing, boiling, shooting geyser}_ that made his breath hitch and vision blur. He tried to speak, but couldn't manage any words before Hanako scrambled out of his lap, bumping bare arms _{brightly-wrapped present opened to only an empty box}—_

— _Ohgod—_

_Qf6-Kxe3-Qa6-Kxb4-Makeitstop-c3-Kc3-Qa1-Kd2-Qb3-Kd1—  
_

By the time the incomprehensible jumble of sense-images had dimmed enough for the room to swim back into focus, Hanako had gone. Touichi and Shinji hadn't moved, looking half-guilty and half-disgruntled.

"Why'd you have to go an' do _that?_ " Touichi grumbled.

"Yeah, now she'll _never_ play with us," Shinji complained.

Saguru crossed his arms, partially for emphasis and partially to make sure his hands couldn't shake. That had been... bad. And Koizumi was probably spectacularly unimpressed with his control—he didn't want to look over his shoulder to check.

"She might. But first you have to catch up to her, and apologize, and promise to teach her how to deal like that so you can all practice together—when _she_ feels good enough to try it in a game."

"Aww, but—!"

Saguru held up a hand to cut off the protests. "What did your fathers say about when this was acceptable?"

They exchanged glances, before Shinji reluctantly muttered, "What you said."

"Does Hanako-chan meet either of those criteria?"

Shinji and Touichi squirmed a bit. "No..."

"Then if you want to play with her, you have to fix that. Understand?"

After more hesitation, the two chorused an assent.

"Go on, then. Poker's done for tonight."

Together, they looked behind him—presumably at Koizumi—but she must have nodded, because they said, "Yes, ma'am," and headed off together.

He slowly turned around to face Koizumi. "My apologies... I hadn't intended to end the game so quickly, or to referee a disagreement."

She smiled lightly at him. "Given your apparent sensitivity, you handled yourself rather well. And it's just as well they left when they did, because it seems the frog needs to start in slightly cooler water. Is this level of company better for you?"

He looked between her, with the glasses, and the twins, who were happily ignoring the rest of the room.

"...Yes." But by Holmes, it was depressing for a comfortable level of input to be limited to _this._ Even if he almost didn't need the familiar comfort of _Bf1, Rd2_ to handle it, and the not-quite-headache he'd been putting off was starting to fade.

"Then start here, until you don't even need a coping mechanism to handle it. I'm sure Ame and Akiko wouldn't mind some assistance coloring."

Since, he knew, something like reading made an excellent distraction from other stimuli, and using a book as a method of mental protection would invalidate the point of being there in the first place.

He smiled at the twins. "May I join you?"

"Sure!" Akiko proudly held out a crayon. "We're coloring Masked Yaiba, see?"

The black and white lines were certainly becoming colorfully filled, if in a rather overlapping mishmash.

"Yes, nicely done." He took the proffered crayon and bent over the paper with them. Aidan hadn't outgrown this sort of thing too long ago, after all. He could almost pretend he was back home. The thought was comforting, and it helped support his resolution that he wasn't going to move until he could truthfully claim _some_ semblance of progress.

There was so much further left to go.


	9. A Woman, Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Snickerer and RandomImagination (despite computer issues) for invaluable betaing. Additional thanks to Ellen Brand and WrenTruesong for letting me write at them, and kdm1412 for helping give momentum to finish this chapter.

_But to what purpose  
_ _Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves  
_ _I do not know. Other echoes  
_ _Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?_  
~Burnt Norton (I.15-17)

* * *

By the time the evening wound to a close, Shinji and Touichi had managed some level of reconciliation with Hanako, the twins had erupted into no fewer than three arguments over color, and Saguru had another headache to go with his mediocre sense of accomplishment. He _had,_ however, weathered the spikes of sense-imagery that accompanied the arguments without hopelessly overloading, and Koizumi had been satisfied enough with the evening's outcome to return his sunglasses with a smile.

"If you think you can handle it," she said, "leave them off for a while in the morning. Shinji-kun is spending the night at Kaito-kun's and Conan and the other teenagers are camping with the Takagis, so you'll only have three adults to contend with."

Saguru let the interesting tidbit slide in favor of the immediate matter of concern. "And the more time I spend around tolerable input, the faster I'll acclimate."

"Within reason, yes. I trust you can judge that for yourself." She raised an eyebrow at him, but it didn't have the same impact on him from safely within the blissful silence of the bronze chain-loop.

Saguru smiled. "Of course."

Once the house cleared out, Kudou set them up with a pair of futons in the den and donated two pairs of sweats and two t-shirts ( _Instant Human, Just Add Coffee_ and _I Think, Therefore I am Dangerous_ ) to substitute for pajamas. Saguru made a mental note to take advantage of the downtime and launder their poor, miniscule, abused wardrobes. Kaito had had other things on his mind lately, but hygiene could only be stretched so far.

As they settled in for the night, Kaito asked how the session with Koizumi had gone. However, since Kaito seemed to be half-lost in other thoughts and also under the influence of a dose of Solomon's tea, Saguru simply answered: "A step in the right direction."

"Good." Kaito flopped onto his pillow, head turned to the side to make important considerations like speech and breathing easier. "'S good. Hate for you to be stuck having trouble…"

His voice trailed off into a snore. Saguru simply shook his head and followed him into sleep.

In the morning, he took Koizumi's advice and kept the glasses in the breast pocket of his shirt. There were really only two people to deal with, since Kuroba was still sleeping like the dead by the time Mouri finished preparing breakfast. (Even if she was technically a Kudou now, it was easier to think of all of them by the same names as their counterparts.) The meal passed in much the same way as dinner had the night before, though this time the range of topics for comparison extended far beyond their immediate families.

Kudou and Mouri were pleasant, low-key company, barely even needing a background mental-hum of music to keep the extra input tolerable. As a result, the sudden entrance of five teenagers into the house was jarring, but not completely overwhelming. This was good, because suddenly he was in the middle of a whirlwind of introductions, Kudou providing a nutshell background on his behalf with a mention of Kaito, still asleep upstairs. Genta, Ayumi, and Conan crowded around him with enthusiastic interest { _inquisitive puppy, wet nose under shirt collar}_ while Mitsuhiko and Ai helped the adults clean up the dishes.

"Have you been many other places?"

"How does it work?"

"Why can Kai-kun do stuff like that?"

The barrage of questions came too quickly to differentiate between speakers, let alone comfortably sort out a reasonable order to answer them in while trying to stay not-overwhelmed by the associated sense-images. To say nothing of also trying to simultaneously formulate any sort of coherent answer. Summoning memory of another chess game helped with the former, but for the latter...

"Ahh, a few other places, not too terribly different from here..." Saguru hesitated, trying to figure out what was safe to tell without making it obvious he was still leaving things out, especially with this disconcertingly enthusiastic—and detective-trained—group. The teens were already leaning closer in expectant interest. "Kuroba-kun has some magical ability not entirely unlike Koizumi-san's, though I'm really not qualified to go into detail, but it's something he was born with and more recently learned to consciously manipulate."

"What kind of stuff _was_ different about the places you went, then?"

"Have you ever been to a place where you and Saguru-ojisan stole stuff rather than chased criminals?

"Or where Kaito-ojisan did the chasing—or didn't do card tricks?"

"...Well..." Saguru hedged, only to be inundated by more questions when he took too long to answer.

"How do you get from one place to another? What do you have to do to make that work? Is it something you can learn?"

"What does it feel like?"

"What did you think about it, the first time you went to a different world?"

Saguru froze. _Different world_ —but—no, wait. Of course the teens wouldn't realize that there could be different terms for talking about paranormal types of travel. Not when he and Kaito had been so careful to only mention the parallel dimensions their presence made obvious, avoiding any hint at the other myriad worlds that existed within each of those dimensions—much less the Heartless that dominated the memories of his first experiences with either kind of travel—

_{Cold-dark-hungry, writhing, prowling, merciless gravity pulling and behind that sentience enough to want to eat-eat-_ eat _the tasty thing, reaching to DEVOUR}_

— _closing in, can't run, can't fight,_ pain _, tugging and tearing and twisting at things never ever meant to separate while a person is still whole—_

THUMP.

The world went dark with an abrupt, ringing silence and dull impact about his head and shoulders, the shock knocking Saguru out of the flashbacks. His breathing restarted with an involuntary gasp, and he blinked at the sudden blurry distortion in his vision.

…It wasn't that his vision was blurry, there were _bars_ across—a round pane of glass that Ayumi was peering at him through in concern?

"Steven-kun?"

"I'm all right," he assured her, brushing aside the memories and their implications for consideration much, _much_ later, and brought up a gloved hand to explore the odd surface of his unexpected… was this a _diving helmet?_

Bewildered, he started to lift it off, only to stop short as it was immediately pushed none-too-gently back down.

"Really, Steven-kun." —Oh, no, that was Koizumi's voice, oddly echoing and muffled through the rounded metal—"I thought we discussed this. I said to _practice_ , not blithely fling yourself into the deep end at the earliest opportunity."

"What did you do that for, Akako-neesan?" Genta demanded.

"To spare our new young friend unnecessary distress, and to make a point that may perhaps _sink in_ this time."

Saguru folded his arms in what was most certainly not a sulk. "I assure you it was not intended that way. I was caught off guard and didn't want to appear rude."

"Because possibly going catatonic on someone without warning rather than doing something to avoid it isn't rude at all." The version of Koizumi that he knew had never managed to sound quite that dry.

He was annoyed, not sulking. Definitely. "I was not aware that that was a possible consequence of a simple introductory conversation."

"Of course you weren't." But her tone was closer to irritated acceptance than biting sarcasm.

"Wait," Ayumi broke in, sounding mildly alarmed, "what do you mean, 'going catatonic without warning'?"

"Well, not now that he's got this on him, he won't," Koizumi answered in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring manner.

"You mean he's got photosensitive or agoraphobic triggers?" Saguru could see Conan eyeing him inquisitively through the barred glass faceplate.

"Close. He does have a hypersensitivity, so when he's not wearing his protective gear—which he wasn't—he's vulnerable to sensory overload. We're trying to improve his tolerance, but…" She trailed off, and he almost imagined he could hear her shrug.

Saguru sighed. "I _did_ manage this morning without incident."

"Right up until you didn't," she replied with perfect equanimity, and he decided that it might be in his best interest to not argue further.

"What kind of hypersensitivity?" Genta sidled into view to join Ayumi and Conan's scrutinising committee.

Saguru eyed them right back, as much as the ridiculous helmet would allow, and concluded he didn't have any dignity left to lose. "…Emotive. You all _feel_ very… brightly." In the pause that followed, he twisted to bring Koizumi into view. "I promise that I have learned my lesson and will be more prepared to use my safeguards. Now, may I, in your infinite wisdom, be trusted to have my peripheral vision back?"

He pulled his glasses out of their pocket and case, displaying their readiness to hand.

Koizumi tapped a forefinger against her lip, making a show of considering it. "You may, for now. But I think I will be hanging onto this for the duration of your visit. Just in case."

With that cheerful declaration, she did finally pull what did indeed prove to be an antique bronze diving helmet off his head, letting him get a breath of fresh air that made him disinclined to complain. Even if she did then tuck the thing back under her arm in a pose that suggested she was entirely prepared to keep it there indefinitely.

He managed to repress a wince at the sudden return of { _concerned puppy noses at ear_ } along with proper sound and light and hastily slipped the glasses back onto his head, breathing a little easier as the sensation returned to manageable levels.

"Your thoughtfulness is too kind." He moved to carefully smooth his hair back into a semblance of order, trying to ignore the curious gaze of the other teenagers, but had barely begun when Kaito's voice came from the doorway.

"Wow, what'd I miss?"

From behind the couch, out of sight, Saguru heard Akiko pipe up, "Mommy put Steven-nii in a time out!"

Saguru very carefully did not swear, and instead dropped his face in his hands as Kaito tried and mostly failed to restrain himself from snickering, the other three teens joining in. "My day is now complete."

* * *

Of course, the day had barely begun. By the time the others arrived, Saguru and Kaito had managed to tap-dance through a satisfactory explanation of their respective magic with a few tidbits about places they'd been without edging too close to all the things they couldn't mention without inviting a host of questions they really didn't want to deal with—and then watched it be re-summarized for Mitsuhiko and Ai when they rejoined the conversation. Mitsuhiko listened with the same sort of enthusiasm the other three had displayed, while Ai gave Saguru and Kaito a considering look, head cocked to one side.

"Do you know versions of all of us, then, where you call home?"

Kaito paused a moment, and something sparked in Saguru's memory. Something his de-aged counterpart had said and that Kuroba had tacitly confirmed: the implication that more than once, the drug's inventor had ended up at its mercy right along with Kudou-Conan.

Red-brown hair. A demeanor that was merely uncommon at this age, but would have been startlingly mature in an eerily familiar way ten years previously. As well as the simple fact of her presence within this select little group.

Sherry.

...Well. Shiho.

As Saguru was still processing the realization—that this girl was ex-Syndicate, even if one who had been born to it and eventually fled—Kaito answered, "Yeah, I've met all five of you a few times."

Something flickered in Ai's expression, though not something that Saguru could read, before she nodded slowly. "Your world isn't very different from ours, then, in terms of history."

Kaito shrugged slightly. "I guess not, but it's hard to say for sure."

The conversation might have gone further, but the adults had finally organized themselves and the gang of offspring and were ready to send them off to the park for the requisite few hours. Genta was apparently staying behind to assist on the culinary side of things, and Ai had similarly arranged to help decorate since Kaito and Saguru were more than enough to substitute for her presence in the park. Mitsuhiko had looked inclined to stay as well until she squeezed his hand with an indulgent smile and told him to go play soccer with the other boys, at which point he allowed himself to be dragged away by Touichi and Shinji.

Beika Park was only a short distance from the Kudou house, a pleasant walk in the mid-morning sunshine. There was just enough breeze to justify wearing a coat, though, and Saguru took advantage of that to keep his collapsed staff in easy reach. The muted concern among the adults, especially the Kudous and Kurobas, had been too pervasive to ignore.

Kaito seemed to have picked up on it, too, going by the faint bulge of the card gun at the back of his waistband. The justified caution still didn't stop Kaito from joining the soccer game with the other boys and Hanako, though, while Saguru agreed to push the twins on the playground swings with Ayumi.

Ayumi was good company and quickly deduced that Saguru had experience with younger kids, which led to the topic of Aidan. Over an hour passed as they swapped stories of the trouble young charges could get in to, as well as the trouble they'd gotten into themselves when they were that age. During his researches into Conan's full history in his spare time between the detective competition and Kaito's return home, Saguru had mostly found records of cases that Conan had solved in Hattori's company. To hear a firsthand account of some of the other various trips-turned-murder-scenes and treasure hunts was nothing short of fascinating.

"You truly stumbled across a drug-smuggling operation in a children's area of a _public library_?"

Ayumi laughed. "We did. And Conan-kun got us home safely, like always. We got better at that sort of thing after Shinichi-niichan came home and apprenticed us."

"I would imagine. Kudou-san wouldn't want his brother's friends to need protecting."

"Not on your life. Ran-neechan and Kazuha-neechan taught me—"

Whatever Ayumi had been going to say, the words were forever lost in the wind as a black, unmarked van suddenly screeched to a halt right next to the grass where all the soccer players had finally collapsed in happy exhaustion, and nearly half a dozen men with masks and tranquilizer rifles piled out.

" _Kaito!_ " The warning was unnecessary—Kaito and the other teens were already rising as he sprinted across the grass, wrenching the staff out of his coat pocket along the way as he cursed the distance. Conan stopped one goon short with a soccer ball to the diaphragm, Mitsuhiko grabbed the three kids to run, and Kaito was firing the card gun with one hand and reaching towards the cardcase on his hip with the other when the first round of tranqs fired.

Conan and Kaito crumpled.

Forty feet.

Saguru barely heard the scream echoing in his ears, barely noticed the whine of a dart buzzing over his shoulder as Mitsuhiko fell too, followed by Touichi.

Thirty feet.

Two goons had Kaito and Conan.

Twenty feet.

Two had reached Mitsuhiko and Touichi, one already starting to bend, the other halting in mid-motion on glimpsing Saguru. That one turned and fired a dart that merely grazed Saguru's cheek without breaking skin, judging by the sudden muted sting but total lack of diminished adrenaline-rage.

Ten feet. Five feet. _Swing_.

The goon who had shot at him went over like a felled tree. Saguru slammed the butt of the staff down once to make sure the bastard _stayed put_ , heedless of the faint _crunch_ that was likely cracking ribs, and raced after the one sprinting toward the van with Touichi.

Even running flat-out again, he wasn't fast enough to make up the lead. The goon rushed past his fellow sniper into the van, and Saguru attacked his only remaining target just as the third shot at taking him down struck home. Momentum brought his staff strike around anyway, and the thug crumpled to the sidewalk just in time to catch Saguru's weight as he fell forward, vision swimming. The van squealing back into traffic was the last thing he heard before everything went dark.

* * *

"-ven-kun?"

Saguru lunged upward on instinct as the world faded back in, and only the fact that Ayumi was already standing two feet away from the bed kept her from being caught in a grapple.

"Wh-Ayumi-san? What happened?"

Ayumi smiled bravely at him, lips trembling only a little. "I called Shinichi-niisan and the others. They brought everyone back to Shinichi-niisan and Agasa-jiichan's houses, until they can track Vermouth down."

Saguru's heart sank. "They got away. You're sure it's her?"

"Well… _They_ think it's her. And they'll find out one way or another, because the two men you hit _didn't_ get away."

"Mmm." Poor consolation for the fact that Kaito was likely in the hands of his living worst nightmare. "Did they give them to the police, or are we trying to handle things ourselves?"

He'd spent too much time around Kaito. Civilian vigilantism actually sounded like the better idea.

"Ourselves. The police would take too long, and Shinichi-niisan is pretty sure that Vermouth doesn't officially exist as anyone, anymore. "

Saguru nodded, taking in the much more open architecture of his surroundings for the first time. "This is Agasa-hakase's house, then?"

"Mmhmm. It's just as safe here, and we're not underfoot until they get answers."

"How long has it been?"

"A little over half an hour. I should go tell Shinichi-niisan—it'll help narrow down the radius, since she's probably based somewhere close enough for one of their tranquilizer doses to last the whole travel time."

"I'll go with you." Saguru swung his legs of the bed and stood, swaying only a little even before Ayumi caught him by the arm.

"Careful! Are you sure?"

He nodded firmly. "I want to know if they're close yet, and to make it clear that I'm not to be left behind when they succeed."

Ayumi eyed him critically. "You might manage it. Shinichi-niisan's really overprotective of _us_ , but you're different…"

"I'm going—even if I have to ziptie myself to someone to make it happen."

She giggled, tone only slightly strained from stress and worry. "I believe you."

When they went next door Hakuba seemed to believe him, too, which was good because Saguru had the necessary ziptie in his bag.

Hakuba squeezed Saguru's shoulder. "Kai-kun will probably need someone familiar, anyway, and you're the only one who really qualifies."

Saguru just nodded. The urge to hurt Kaito's kidnappers aside, Kaito did not need his sanity and peace of mind stretched any thinner than it already was. Saguru wasn't entirely certain what he could do on that front—hurting and catching perpetrators was so much more straightforward—but at least he could be there, just in case.

"Stay here until we know more, then. We'll be moving quickly when we do. Ayumi-chan, if you could go back and help Ai-kun and Genta-kun with the children…"

Ayumi sighed, and gave Hakuba a resigned smile. "I know, I know… Our parents would kill you if anything happened to us, and you know ahead of time that this will be a little bit dangerous. I'll make sure the girls don't give Agasa-ojiisan any grief."

"Thank you." When she had gone, Hakuba said, "I'll be going upstairs. It would be best if you stayed on the first floor, but make yourself at home."

"Of course." Saguru watched him go, then went to find his and Kaito's bags.

He didn't have to know. He didn't _want_ to know what Kuroba and Kudou might do for the sake of family, or what Hakuba or Koizumi would do for friends as near as. He was rather afraid it might be as far as he would go for Aidan, and… he'd never entirely admitted to himself how far he would go for that, because it was very far indeed. Almost as disturbing was the quiet realization that the distance he would go for Kaito—and for Aoko, and not only because if something happened to her then surely Kaito would break in equally unpleasant ways—was rapidly gaining ground on Aidan.

…He did the laundry. Kaito would want to come home to clean clothes.

* * *

A shout from upstairs startled Saguru out of the meditative blankness he'd managed to fall into, waiting for the dryer cycle to finish, and Kuroba and Kudou raced out the door towards Agasa's, presumably with news for their wives. Hattori clomped downstairs only a shade slower and headed for the living room, from where Saguru soon heard what sounded rather a lot like a hidden safe being opened and systematically emptied. Hakuba appeared a few moments later, Koizumi leaning on his arm as they descended, and the older man mustered up a smile.

"Five minutes, Steven-kun. Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be." He hadn't let his staff and coat out of arm's reach since he woke up. All he needed was his shoes, and those were by the door. "Where are they?"

"Old office building, just under thirty minutes drive northwest of here."

Hattori re-entered, carrying two wooden katanas and three long drawstring bags. "Got our stuff. You hangin' in there, Akako-san?"

Koizumi smiled, despite the new dark circles under her eyes. "I'll manage, thank you."

Saguru's eyes narrowed. "Wait… is it just your energy that's been drained, to find them?"

She nodded carefully. "Not enough to keep me home, of course."

"Yes, but—wait just a moment." Saguru scrambled back to their bags and rooted through the pockets, shoving aside spare clothes and toiletries and the small padded tin of the precious apotoxin sample he'd wheedled from the rescued Kudou while Kaito'd been preoccupied. Saguru quickly found one of the vials of green liquid—elixirs, Riku had called them, what felt like an age ago. Kaito normally relied on his own energy, since recovery time would restore that energy eventually; they saved the vials Riku had gifted them in case of dire need, but surely getting Kaito back counted.

"Please—take this, if you would," he offered as he returned, holding it out to her. "It's a bit of magic we picked up from elsewhere. It will help… I don't even know if you'll need all of it."

"Oh?" Koizumi took it and carefully removed the cork, delicately sniffing the contents with a sense of professional curiosity.

"Kuroba-kun didn't think much of the taste, but it helped him keep going once, when it was important. If it will help get him back safely, and keep everyone else safe in the process, I'd like you to use this one."

She studied the liquid for another long moment, during which Saguru mentally admitted that the unnatural green was a bit off-putting if you didn't already know it could and did work, but then she tossed her head back and downed half the small bottle in one gulp. The only acknowledgment of the taste she made was a slight pursing of her lips as she replaced the cork, and then she suddenly straightened and took a deep, satisfied breath.

"Oh… that _is_ lovely…" She smiled at him. "Kai-kun was spot on about the taste, but it works quite well. Might I keep the rest?"

"Please do, especially considering where we're going."

She nodded and pocketed it as Kudou and Kuroba returned with Mouri, Touyama, and Aoko, the last of whom was carrying what looked like the pole of a pushbroom with the brush head screwed off.

Hattori grinned approval at it. "Good, you found one. Kudou, here." He handed over one of the bags he and Saguru now both carried. Kudou opened it and pulled out a rifle and a belt with a full complement of darts as ammo. Licensure at least made the rifles more legal than if Kudou owned three handguns, and even if possessing the requisite drugs for the darts and intending to use them on humans was rather more dubious territory, it was still preferable to any of the potential alternatives.

Satisfied with the equipment check, Kudou replaced both items and surveyed those gathered. "Right. Let's go."

Three cars (Kudou's Infiniti, Hakuba's Lexus, and Agasa's Beetle) made for something more like a procession than a stealth operation, but quick, private transportation was crucial. On the way, Aoko informed him his job was to stay with her and make sure no one that the others took down would get back up before the police arrived. The rest of the ride was quiet. There was nothing more to be said.

Even once they arrived at the unassuming-looking office building, the whole group was almost eerily quiet—equipment was readied without a word, including gloves and a large handful of zipties per person. Then a faint crackle of electricity from Koizumi shorted out what cameras Saguru could see, and quite possibly more that he couldn't. Hattori, Mouri, and Touyama spread to cover the building's exits with a brief exchange of hand signals and nods, before Kuroba and Kudou led the rest of them to the main entrance. After the briefest of pauses, they burst inside, and then the adrenaline took over.

The lobby was empty except for a few fritzing cameras, though it didn't stay that way for long. Two men, similar to those that had been at the park, burst out of the stairwell with guns drawn. Kudou and Kuroba had some of the best reflexes Saguru had ever seen, however, and both men dropped before they could even pull a trigger—fortunate, as the group quickly confirmed that, unlike before, these opponents carried fully functioning illegal handguns.

Saguru and Aoko swiftly bound the men together while Hakuba stowed the safetied guns well outside of reach on the off-chance they would wake up. The other three checked the stairwell, and Saguru didn't pay much attention until a _FOOM_ accompanied by a wave of faint heat reached them. His head snapped up to see a faint smoke trail drifting toward the ground in more light than had been present earlier, and heard a shout of combined surprise and utter terror from somewhere above. The light hadn't even faded before Kudou and Kuroba rushed forward in the wake of… what had quite possibly been a fireball. Saguru made a mental note to never _truly_ annoy the Koizumi back home in case she knew or eventually figured out how to do the same. Then they were on the next floor, hallways and rooms and more hired thugs occasionally punctuating the out-of-date decor.

In the absence of a clear line of sight ahead, Saguru concentrated on not tripping over the downed goons and making sure they were all effectively restrained. There was a protective, desperate viciousness in the air as they cleared floor after near-identical floor without finding their quarry.

The floors were nearly starting to blur when they burst out of the stairwell again and Saguru abruptly heard Kaito, voice hoarse, cursing Sharon Vineyard out in approximately three languages at the top of his lungs. Another wave of heat swept in front of them, and Saguru gritted his teeth and forced himself to follow behind as they first cleared the floor of immediate danger before Kudou wrenched the most likely door open.

The litany of curses cut off abruptly, and Saguru pocketed his staff and shoved forward into the room. "Kuroba-kun!"

He stopped short, just for a moment, at the sight of Kaito strapped thoroughly into a medical exam room chair, barefoot and with mittens duct-taped over his hands.

Then Kaito ventured, "Hakuba-kun?" in a far too plaintive tone, and Saguru darted forward with a muted snarl to tear off the offending bonds as soon as he managed to remove his own gloves. He had his sunglasses, so it shouldn't matter much that Kaito was in short sleeves, and the tape wrapping straight onto bare wrist needed the use of _fingernails._

"Yes. We're here. We're getting all of you back home, right now. Are you all right?"

Once freed of the straps, the hand that Saguru didn't immediately start working free of the duct tape clamped onto Saguru's arm in an almost painful grip, even through the mitten. "Just… get me _out_. Vermouth?"

Saguru shook his head, ignoring the group behind him as Hakuba sent the others off to continue searching the floor. "Still looking, but they'll get her."

"...They'd better." Kaito didn't seem too inclined to preserve what was left of his voice, because he continued, raggedly, "She'll just do it again. Maybe even get more the next time, steal as many as she can to make into her agents—her little puppets with the faces of those she was never supposed to possess. And it'll be okay if it takes her another ten years to break 'em into that because that's _half the fun_ , watching all the fight bleed out a day and week and month at a time until when she says jump they just ask how high—"

" _Kuroba!_ "

Kaito's mouth clicked shut into a rictus of a smile, his breath hissing through his nose and tightly clenched teeth. Saguru squeezed the wrist he was still working to free and hurried to provide a distraction from what was obviously a reaction to a combination of the false memories and whatever Kaito had pieced together about the situation since waking.

"They'll find her," Saguru promised, and hoped he wouldn't be made into a liar. "What happened to your possessions?"

"…Took 'em. Vermouth wanted the gun; she hadn't expected me to have it, I swear she almost looked like she'd figured out who I had to be, no matter how impossible, just from it... said it was worth grabbing the puzzle after all." Kaito shuddered noticeably, but then after a moment's pause, continued, "The guy who searched me said his kid might like my Deck."

There was something in Kaito's tone that made Saguru pause. Losing the card gun, yes, he'd have expected that to hurt, but the Deck was still so _new_ for its loss to evoke such a visceral response, unless...

"It left you alone in your head again." Kaito hadn't always sounded grateful to have the occasional mental conversation, but to have had it unexpectedly torn away from him like that... Saguru wished he carried his own Deck on him, rather than stored away in his bag. Though the cards were different, it might still have been better than nothing.

"…Except for the memories." Kaito kept his eyes on their hands, and Saguru was forcibly reminded that even _before_ the nightmares started, Kaito hadn't seemed to like spending much time without an outside distraction, mental or physical, to focus on. The connection might have been useful in more ways than one, if it hadn't been yanked out of his reach.

Saguru bit back a growl and finally freed one hand of the blasted mittens, careful to not take a patch of skin with the last of the tape, and started on the other before Kaito could get the bright idea of trying to do it himself.

"Would you recognize his face?" he asked.

"Square jaw, short hair, thin musta—"

"I get the picture," Saguru interrupted, because a thorough description would only waste time and leave Kaito's voice even worse off. "We'll start on this floor, then. Do you need a drink? There's a drinking fountain just down the hall that should still work..."

Kaito's smile was slightly forced, but still better than it had been a moment ago. "Yeah."

"Right. Just a tick to finish this..." It took less than a minute to remove the tape completely, though it felt like much longer. Saguru quickly replaced his gloves—all other reasons aside, no one wanted to leave fingerprints here—and looked around. "Do you know what happened to your shoes?"

Kaito shrugged impatiently. "Took those, too."

"We'll get you new ones," Hakuba said. "She wouldn't have made something like that easy to find, and it'll be easier than searching the entire building."

"...We don't have funds for that," Saguru admitted reluctantly. The extra taxi to deal with the other Vermouth had eaten most of the slush money he'd brought, particularly when Saguru knew that Kaito's shoes were the most expensive article of clothing the magician owned. They were what let him _run._

"I wasn't including the two of you in that 'we', Steven-kun," Hakuba answered with a hint of amusement.

"...Oh."

"Consider it partial recompense for getting you dragged into all of this in the first place."

Saguru hesitated, an automatic refusal of the charity dying before it passed his lips. Debt and obligation were not things to be taken lightly, but... this was his counterpart. Hakuba was close enough a reflection that he had to know that just as well, and so not make such an offer if he didn't mean it. And… it really had been a long day, for everyone. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to simply accept.

"Thank you; we appreciate it." Saguru turned back and offered a hand to help Kaito stand. "All right to walk, then?"

To Saguru's faint surprise, Kaito actually took it and stepped down carefully from the chair. "Think the sedative left me light-headed. Never been good with meds."

"Mmm. ...Do you want to walk, or lean?" In the moment Kaito took to debate his options, he swayed a bit, and Saguru shook his head. "Never mind."

He carefully slipped an arm around Kaito's back, and was relieved when Kaito didn't protest the steadying brace but instead let Saguru take some of his weight.

Before they could start moving a faint buzz distracted him, and Saguru looked over to see Hakuba checking his mobile screen. After a moment, a very wolfish grin spread over the man's face. "Hattori says Ran-san caught Sharon going out an exit. She had Kai-kun's card gun on her, too."

Kaito sagged further, letting out a shaky breath of relief. "So it's safe. And..." It was barely a pale shadow of his normal grin, but it was still the closest Saguru had seen since the park. "She's not going to be able to pull anything like this again."

"Never," Hakuba confirmed. "Let's finish up in here and see for ourselves."

When Hakuba led the way out, Saguru realized that he'd been so focused on Kaito, he hadn't even registered the sounds of the successful discovery of Touichi and Conan—both of whom were now being hugged within an inch of their lives by their respective family. He exchanged a tired, pleased smile with Hakuba and Kaito, then guided Kaito to the drinking fountain. Once Kaito had inhaled enough water to challenge a dehydrated camel, they started a slow tour of the unconscious goons to find the missing Deck. Kaito was leaning perhaps a little heavier than might be strictly necessary for his current physical status, but at this point Saguru really couldn't care less.

"There. Him." Kaito was still hoarse, but less so, enough that Saguru dared to cautiously hope that Kaito would still have a voice tomorrow. They maneuvered over to the limp man and managed to kneel together without falling over, and Kaito unerringly retrieved the case from an inside coat pocket before cradling it to his chest, eyes drifting half-closed and lips twitching faintly in unrealized smiles and unspoken words. Saguru let him have the moment in silence.

When Kaito finally looked up again, a small handful of his far-too-many ragged edges seemed to have smoothed back into place. "Okay."

"Off we go, then."

The whole group headed downstairs together to the outside, where Hattori, Mouri and Touyama had Vermouth seated on the hood of Agasa's Beetle, thoroughly restrained and wearing a poker-face smile Kid might envy. Mouri was on the phone, a sweetly victorious smile on her face as she finished giving directions to the other party. After a few more pleasantries, she ended the call and pulled Conan into a tight hug, smiling at Kudou over Conan's shoulder.

"Jodie-san and Akai-san will be here in twenty minutes."

"They're still in Tokyo?" Saguru asked, surprised, though given the circumstances perhaps he shouldn't have been.

"Jodie-san was never at peace over Vermouth getting away, either," Kudou answered. "They're not active any longer, as far as I know, but they would have stayed in touch with Black-san. The FBI can take her and good riddance."

Saguru nodded. "And her lackeys?" The question was more out of a habit of being thorough than any true care to know.

"We'll send an anonymous tip to one of the Takagi-keibu after we're gone."

Still leaning slightly against Saguru, Kaito glanced back at the building. "…Did you get a good answer about what she was trying to do?"

Kudou smiled without much humor. "Getting a straight answer from Vermouth is slightly less likely than a personal appearance by Sherlock Holmes. As for the truth, though, I think your little rant earlier wasn't far off. She's… patient, and likes to go for the heart as much as the throat. After the kids were born we realized that when Conan turned seventeen, Shinji and Touichi would be six—and she's got the twisted sense of aesthetics to want to play with parallels."

"…Yeah," Kaito agreed quietly, "she does."

Kudou sighed and shook his head. "That's still speculation, though. We'll have to see if their computers have anything more concrete." He looked at Koizumi. "How did we do?"

Koizumi offered a catlike smile and patted several computer cases she'd apparently acquired during the trip through the building. "Anything portable is ours; anything not is currently so much melted slag."

Saguru decided he was better off not asking exacting how she'd managed that, particularly not when he thought he could feel the adrenaline crash looming. Instead, he acquired Hakuba's keys and made a wide berth around Vermouth—she'd been watching them intently since the previous exchange began, and he had a gut-clenching suspicion she probably knew more about the two of them than they would have _ever_ wanted her to suspect, even without the chance of seeing her again.

He bundled Kaito into the backseat, ducked in the other side, and half-collapsed into his own seat in exhaustion.

"Let's not make a habit of this, yes?"

Kaito had already started listing sideways before Saguru had made it inside the car, and a few more moments of gravity at work saw to their shoulders meeting. Kaito relaxed slightly at the contact.

"I won't if you won't."

Saguru felt far too aware of the fact that Kaito's other associations between Saguru and Vermouth included his death at Kaito's hands and near-death at Kudou's, and he didn't move other than to reach up and lightly muss Kaito's already hopeless hair before leaning back to wait for their ride.

"Deal."

* * *

One hour and twenty-three minutes later, Vermouth's custody had been successfully transferred and the minor caravan made it back to Kudou's house. Another massive round of hugs ensued, somehow pulling Saguru and Kaito in as well, until someone remembered that none of the kidnapped trio had shoes and they all got bundled into the house to be fussed over in better comfort. Saguru was rather bemused to discover his apparent inclusion in the category of "those to be fussed over", which appeared to involve blankets, hot food courtesy of Genta having saved the birthday meal, and being engulfed in the pile of teenagers and kids confirming for themselves that Conan and Touichi were home safe.

Admittedly, it was a bit nice. Reminiscent of how Mum and Baaya had treated him when he'd had bad days in the past. ...Successful retrieval mission notwithstanding, this probably counted as one of those days. It couldn't hurt to let being the responsible one slide for just one night, particularly when he had started to excuse himself to check on the abandoned laundry only to be informed that it was already taken care of.

He let himself relax beside Kaito, vaguely aware of the way the other teen alternated between withdrawing quietly from the various conversations and slipping back into the center of attention with a lively story or magic trick. Saguru didn't quite lose track of time, but it was still a bit of a surprise to abruptly realize the adults were arranging a small sea of futons across the floor, and the younger children had fallen asleep where they sat.

Hakuba gently lifted Akiko from between Saguru and Mitsuhiko, and smiled at Saguru and Kaito. "We're only packing in like this for tonight, most likely, but Kudou and the rest of us would like you to stay longer than just through tomorrow—at the very least until you've recovered from today on top of everything else."

Saguru exchanged a glance with Kaito, who had a glint in his eyes that might have been mulish before the skin around the left eye abruptly twitched, and the expression melted into a mixture of resignation and gratitude. "Yeah, okay. I guess we could use it."

"Indubitably," Saguru murmured. He felt inclined to not move for at least a week, with a preference for Kaito being in view, if not arm's reach, for the duration. "And perhaps if anyone feels in the mood for tea…"

Kaito nodded, a bit grimly. "I need to refill the thermos anyway."

The statement might have worried Saguru with how quickly the tea container was approaching empty, but at this point he would happily douse Kaito in the stuff if it would keep Vermouth and the twisted reflection out of Kaito's dreams until there'd been enough time for actual processing of the past week or two to occur. Of course, at the rate things had been piling up, it felt like they would need a full month to even approach that point.

Hakuba nodded. "I think your recipe would be appreciated tonight all around, except for the young ones. I'll help you navigate the kitchen."

With tea summarily made and distributed, Saguru quickly prepared for bed and settled on his designated futon and tried to savor the drink for being, well, _tea_ , rather than just a ward against nightmares. Kaito downed his own tea with a lot more speed than care—scorching his tongue in the process, but Saguru couldn't blame him for caring more about the effects than the delivery medium—and flumped down on the adjacent futon in a manner oddly reminiscent of the night before.

"Won't have to stay long," Kaito mumbled, yawning. "Get you back home to Aidan-kun soon. Day or two 'fore we go… deal with things."

"Of course," Saguru agreed easily, and didn't believe it for a moment. In theory, they could leave whenever they liked, but he would feel better about it if their counterparts agreed that their self-assessments of recovery were accurate. Especially with Kaito's tendency to push himself too early and too far.

In the end, Saguru was right. They stayed another seven days, thirteen hours and twenty-seven minutes, and they needed every second of that rest.


	10. Nightmare Fuel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never thought I would be writing this, but please note:
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter contains mental instability, suicidal ideation.
> 
> Many thanks to Snickerer, whose wrenchbunnies apparently have a flair for the distinctly unhinged and are responsible for several full passages and many improvements. Many more thanks to RandomImagination for traditional betaing, and to the readers who continue to stick with me for their patience.

_Distracted from distraction by distraction_  
_Filled with fancies and empty of meaning_  
 _Tumid apathy with no concentration_  
 _Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind_  
 _That blows before and after time_  
~Burnt Norton (III.12-16)

* * *

The trouble with allowing an adult to help you through the aftermath of a... difficult situation... was that it tended to make them overprotective. Even when one of those adults was an older, alternate self.

Okay, yes, two days ago Kaito'd been pushing himself when he'd said he felt ready. Kuroba and Kudou had both been right when they'd tag-teamed him with a list of signs that he _was_ pushing himself, as irritating as it was to admit that. At least Kaito'd had the sense to not nab Saguru and leave anyway just to try and prove them wrong.

In the end, it had been good to spend more time outside and in trees and on roofs and very definitely not tied up or within a mile of Vermouth. Kaito was fairly certain that without Solomon Motou's tea every night, the nightmares about his thief-assassin counterpart would be fighting for dominance with a new set about the entire kidnapping fiasco and what _could_ have happened if Vermouth had gotten away. Saguru being alive and nearby had also helped some, at least when Saguru hadn't been off working with Akako to put Saguru's head back together with more than bronze and duct tape. Kaito was still working to not feel guilty about Saguru having to do that, because he suspected that if Saguru knew, he'd lightly cuff Kaito and order him to stop being a twit.

So here Kaito was, being not-a-twit and ready to restart working on how to travel home without being pulled off course yet _again_. Not only getting home to Tokyo,, but also back to the navigable set of worlds they'd begun to grow familiar with. There'd finally been enough breathing room to start worrying about how Riku and the others had gotten on after Kaito and Saguru had vanished on them. At this point, Kaito felt about as settled as he was going to get without finally dealing with Vermouth and whatever other enemy he might have somehow acquired in that nightmare world. It was hard to imagine which would be worse: that there was someone with magic and Darkness from another reality who had it out for him specifically, or that there _wasn't_ and this was still happening to them anyway.

Standing with Mouri, Kudou gave Kaito a wry little smile. "You do look better."

"I feel better; I think I'll go out for a walk," Kaito deadpanned, and was gratified that Saguru actually snickered and Kudou smirked.

"Just so long as it isn't a silly walk, I think we'll be satisfied."

"Only when warranted," Kaito promised with a grin. "It's not even registered yet."

"I still want to know who let you watch Monty Python, and your definition of warranted is highly questionable," Saguru retorted, mostly in jest, then looked at the Kudous. "I'll ensure he doesn't do anything overtly foolish."

A split-second pause, and Saguru added, "Insofar as this is feasible."

"Ha, ha." Kaito elbowed Saguru lightly, but Saguru just smiled mildly in return.

"This will, of course, be a much easier task if you keep your promise of warning me of your plans in advance."

"…I will." Kaito was utterly certain that he never wanted to see Saguru punch concrete like that ever again.

"All right, then." Kudou smiled at them, cutting the tension. "But stay for lunch, so everyone can stop by and say goodbye, won't you?"

Kaito relaxed. "Yeah, we can do that." As a thought struck him, he grinned. "Do we get chocolate for dessert?"

Mouri gave him an amusedly tolerant smile while the other two snorted. "Help Conan keep Shinji entertained until the others start to arrive, and I'll see what we can do."

"Yes, ma'am. Are dragons in the house okay?" _If you don't mind?_ he added silently to Méraud. She'd seemed to enjoy the times he'd summoned her in miniature earlier in the week, showing off shamelessly to the kids and playing 'it' in a cross between tag and hide-and-seek until Kaito was too fatigued to continue (far too quickly, even if Summoning in a world like this was akin to running a marathon around the peak of Mt Fuji).

:Not at all,: came the immediate reply, good humor laced with what almost felt like a hint of wistfulness.

"So long as there's no running," Mouri allowed.

"We'll be good," Kaito promised. "Are you coming, Hakuba-kun?"

Saguru took a moment to retrieve his small leather pocketbook and opened it to what Kaito was almost positive was a completely random page. "Oh, I suppose I could pencil you into my morning schedule."

Kaito resisted rolling his eyes. "Come on."

They found Conan and Shinji together in the den, Conan typing on a laptop with Shinji curled against his side and reading a book. Conan immediately looked up at their entrance, tensing, before recognition hit and he smiled at them. "You guys finally finished talking with Niichan and Neechan?"

"Yep." Kaito flopped onto the couch on Shinji's other side. "We're leaving after lunch."

"Aww," Shinji said, lowering the book. "It's been fun having guests."

Saguru took a seat in the nearby chair. "Unfortunately, time marches on and we have a great deal left to do."

After a moment of subtle hesitation, Saguru removed his sunglasses from their perch in his hair, and Kaito very carefully tried to clamp down on all his emotions, even his surprise at the unexpected move. Saguru hadn't taken off his glasses in Kaito's company since the whole kidnapping disaster—not that Kaito could blame him—not even to sleep. He'd used to at least sometimes, before, but now...

Kaito wasn't sure how Saguru was making it through every single night in the same careful position, lying flat on his back with one hand resting under his head. Maybe it was the same sort of discipline that let you manage to sleep standing up and wearing your clothes.

Admittedly, Saguru had also avoided being unshielded around Conan, likely because it was easy for Kaito and Conan to unintentionally force an overwhelming emotional roller coaster onto Saguru. Kaito tried to not think too much about it, especially since he was also still trying to think as little as humanly possible about this reality's Vermouth and her now-thwarted plans. He filed Saguru's choice as a hopefully good background detail as Conan asked, "But you're never coming back, are you?"

Kaito shook his head. "It's better if we don't, even if we could."

Conan nodded thoughtfully. "Better to stay where you belong."

"Yeah." Kaito smiled at Shinji. "Méraud wanted to say goodbye before we go, but since you're enjoying your book we can wait until the others make it so you can all say goodbye together." Which would conveniently only require a single, time-limited Summon rather than anything that might wipe Kaito out before they could even leave.

"Cool!" Shinji grinned and settled back against Conan, becoming re-absorbed in his book. Kaito pulled out a deck of cards to shuffle and tried to pretend that all his nervous anticipation regarding the coming afternoon didn't exist. It didn't much help his concentration that Saguru only lasted another few minutes—spent staring into middle distance—before he replaced the glasses with a soft sigh.

"All right?" Kaito murmured, hands slowing.

Saguru shrugged lightly. "As well as I might expect."

"If you need more time, or practice..." As much as Kaito hated the idea of waiting, he _would_ if it was warranted, but he'd thought Saguru felt more than ready to move on, too.

"I'll be fine." Saguru smiled in what was likely supposed to be a reassuring manner. "It won't make any appreciable difference whether we leave now or later."

Kaito gave him a dubious look. "You're sure?"

Saguru didn't so much as bat an eye. "Positive."

Kaito sighed, and hoped they wouldn't regret anything later. "Fine."

After about half an hour, Hanako and Touichi arrived with their respective parents, and the kids spent the next twenty-odd minutes playing with Méraud while Kaito supervised the game of hide-and-tag from the couch. It was relaxing to watch them, and the concentration required to keep Méraud present without draining his reserves left him with no spare mental capacity with which to quietly freak out.

There was no time during lunch, either, not with everyone talking about anything and everything but what he and Saguru were planning to step into. He took the distraction in the spirit it was meant and tried to enjoy the meal.

* * *

At least they didn't make Kaito and Saguru's departure a spectacle. After lunch, and a farewell of bowing and shoulder-squeezes and some hugs from the kids, everyone but Akako left them in the den and withdrew to other parts of the house.

"Any last advice for us?" Kaito asked with careful lightness as he hefted his bag, not entirely sure he wanted an answer.

Akako eyed him for a long moment, lips curving into a smile that had little to do with reassurance. "Don't die, make it home, and always be better than they are."

Her gaze shifted to Saguru. "And you. You'll have to ensure the both of you take care of yourselves, since goodness knows that one won't."

That… hadn't been quite what Kaito had had in mind, but he supposed he'd asked for it.

Saguru snorted faintly. "I'll _try._ "

Her smile curved higher, just a little. "Good. I'd tell you boys not to do anything stupid, but I know you rather too well for that. So, go. Do what you need to do. And when you do, be sure you know full well what you're doing, why you're doing it, and where your backup is."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Kaito answered, giving an insouciant salute and ignoring with the ease of long practice the look from Saguru that said that he was getting the form completely wrong.

Akako clapped them each on the shoulder, gave a single firm nod, then stepped away, seating herself with one leg casually crossed over the other. "Go on, then. I'd best see you start off safely, else I'd never hear the end of it."

The thought actually made Kaito feel oddly better, knowing that if they got in over their heads from the start, there was someone at their back who would help make sure it couldn't spill back into this world. He glanced at Saguru—still there, safe, and breathing; good—and took a deep breath.

They'd already spent an afternoon arguing the pros and cons of where to aim. Aiming for a known assassin had little to recommend it, but Kaito could only be sure about the existence of a few inhabitants of the other world. The ones he knew of would be no more likely to take their sudden appearance well, or be willing to help them if they even knew anything useful. And that assumed Kaito would be able to accurately aim for any of them in the first place. Kaito also definitely didn't want to try aiming directly for the _source_ of the Dark-tinged Shadowthread behind all this without knowing more about who—or what—it was. So, in the end, the plan of starting with the best-known factor had won out.

He _reached_ for _nightmarenotme-reflectiongonewrong-safeplacenear-outofsight-unnoticed_ and hoped it would be enough. Trusted, as Shadow caught and tore between Here and There, that it would be. It had to be.

The rift in the world widened and held steady. Kaito swayed on his feet but quickly waved off Saguru when he stepped closer.

" 'm fine." The unimpressed fraction of a breath from Akako's direction was quiet enough to be easily missed and Kaito let it pass as though it had been. "I'll eat a protein bar later," he murmured anyway, for her benefit, but his attention was already pulled toward the almost inhuman sound coming through the portal.

It sounded suspiciously like hoarse, broken laughter.

Kaito wouldn't have thought it _possible._ Not here. Insane laughter, yes, he'd woken up with it ringing in his ears both times in the last week that he'd tried abstaining from Solomon's tea. But hysteria? _Hopelessness_ _?_ He hadn't thought the operative knew the meaning of either word.

He traded an uneasy glance with Saguru. Well. They hadn't expected this to be pleasant… or straightforward. He started to shift his weight, to see if there were any clues in what little was visible through the Shadow-bordered rift.

:Wait.:

Kaito went completely still. _…Lupin-san?_

:The stakes are higher here, given what you seek. You should allow one who is more difficult to harm—and better able to go unseen—to lead.:

Kaito would have replied, but the sudden absence of the presence he was still only partially conscious of made him pause. He sighed instead and crossed his arms. Saguru glanced at him, starting to frown, but Kaito shook his head and motioned him to silence, waiting for any further sign.

After what felt like a short eternity but was really probably under a minute, Méraud's voice sounded in his mind. :It's a single-bedroom apartment. The only human nearby is your counterpart, in the other room. He is… not well.:

Kaito hissed softly and crept right to the edge of the portal for a better look at the other side, Saguru keeping a half-pace behind. The room on the other side was indeed empty. Spartan was a kinder description than sterile: blank walls, a small couch, a TV, and a laptop illuminated by the single window filtering in the growing dawn, a kitchenette near the closed front door, and another doorway that presumably led into a bedroom.

"Well?" Saguru demanded under his breath.

Kaito hesitated, then responded in kind. "…He's there. Alone, Méraud says."

Saguru took a moment to absorb that, then eyed the doorway the unsettling sounds were coming from with the wariness it deserved. After a moment, though, he shifted his bag to hang more securely, set his jaw, and stepped through the rift before Kaito could pull him back. Kaito carefully did not sputter imprecations at the move, or at the sardonic eyebrow Saguru raised when he didn't immediately follow. He still wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of walking into whatever was going on in there. But the thought of Saguru doing it ahead of him—the first nightmare, the gunshot, flashed vividly through memory—and then he was pushing past Saguru to retake the lead.

Saguru didn't protest, but he did pull his staff out of his coat and silently extend it to its full size. Kaito pulled out his card gun for what little comfort its familiar weight could provide, then carefully coaxed the Shadowrift to constrict. He didn't let it reseal completely, leaving enough of a gap that he could easily sweep it back open if they had to retreat in a hurry, but the remaining line of Shadow beside the wall was unobtrusive enough to be missed by anyone not expecting it. Precautions complete, he started to move toward the bedroom doorway, only to pause while still safely out of sight. Determining where the man was and what he was doing was important, but startling an assassin of highly dubious sanity? Akako would not be at all impressed if he started disregarding her advice so quickly. He debated a moment, and then turned back, moving past the kitchenette counter to knock on the front door from the inside.

The half-mad keening stopped so abruptly the silence was almost deafening. Both of them waited, tense, for any sound or sign of motion. None came.

Instead, after a long pause, laughter began again: quieter than what had first greeted them, less frantic, and yet equally unrelated to mirth.

This was technically better than bullets, but not at all reassuring. When the laughter simply continued with no further sign of change, Kaito exchanged another glance with Saguru, took a deep breath, and sidled closer to the open door. He'd already eliminated as much of the element of surprise as he cared to. If he bothered opening and closing the front door, that might make the other man defensive against an intruder. A mysterious appearance out of nowhere was usually an advantage.

There was no way to approach entirely unseen if the occupant was facing the doorway, so Kaito resigned himself to advancing cautiously while staying ready to retreat at a moment's notice. Visibility was poor, the early dawn light mostly blocked by closed window blinds. Kaito could just make out a figure sitting huddled on a futon, facing the wall beside the doorway but with his head bowed, one arm curled tightly around a pillow. The person was still laughing, still with a mirthless, unfeigned quality that—especially under the circumstances—was downright eerie.

Retreating now would leave them no closer to their goal than before.

It was still tempting.

Kaito braced himself and advanced another cautious step. The figure showed no sign of noticing. Kaito bit his lip, prepared himself to duck _very quickly_ , and flicked the light switch just inside the doorway.

The laughter stopped. The figure's head finally lifted, turned toward them, and Kaito found himself staring at an older face that wasn't quite his, an altered reflection in a black Organization outfit that he would never wear.

_He looks like hell._

Kaito couldn't stop the thought from popping up even as he tried to calculate whether he needed to dodge back out of sight. The syndicate member's face was drawn with tension and bone-deep exhaustion, dark around the eyes yet too pale elsewhere, and marked by the loss of more weight than he'd really had to spare. Bangs longer than any Kaito had ever worn fell aside from the operative's face, limp and unheeded. This wasn't the monster Kaito had been bracing himself to face down, not by a long shot; he'd expected to find the catlike confidence, cold anger, or casual cruelty of the operative that had featured in his nightmares, but any trace of those qualities in this man had been erased by an unsettling hollowness in his eyes. His counterpart's face had never been visible in the dreams, but Kaito realized with a sudden shock that the eyes of the man before him were almost more blue-gray than the familiar deep blue he'd unconsciously been expecting.

They stared at each other for another tense, uncertain moment. Then the man on the futon closed his eyes and chuckled again, smooth and controlled, something about it raising the hairs on the back of Kaito's neck.

"You're not what I was expecting." A voice that clearly hadn't been used in days, going by the rusty quality of both the laughter and speech, should not have been able to also sound that effortlessly careless. Then again, Kaito could probably do the same if he really tried. Probably. And down that train of thought lay hysteria. "Though perhaps I should have."

"Why do you say that?" Kaito ventured cautiously. Being unexpectedly expected was... unexpected. And he was stopping that thought right there too.

The man—Kaito couldn't bring himself to think of him as _Kuroba_ _—_ smiled. He turned back to face the wall in front of him again, but Kaito had the unsettled feeling he wasn't actually looking at anything inside that apartment.

"Silly of me to think I could escape them just by staying awake, wasn't it?" he asked, disturbingly conversational tone at odds with the way his grip was digging deep into the pillow. "Of course they would follow me. Unless, of course, I'm not awake at all."

Kaito stared. Surely that couldn't mean what it sounded like. But the words made no sense unless he was talking about...

"Admittedly," the man on the futon continued, still disconcertingly casual, "seeing you from the outside is new. Just like you being _here_. But, then, if the dreams are going to be different now, why shouldn't that have changed?"

 _Dreams. Of me. Through_ _ **my eyes**_ , _of bits of my life_ —

Before he could attempt to process that unsettling concept any further, the impression of movement behind his shoulder made Kaito suddenly wish very hard that he thought it would be safe to take his eyes off the man for even a moment. Or that he could believe Saguru had actually had the sense to stay out of sight. How exactly would he have to move to kick Saguru out of harm's way in a hurry if things went bad?

The man's head was shifting the few degrees it would take to see Saguru beyond Kaito.

_No, no, no, don't—_

There was another of those nerve-wracking, frozen moments.

Then the man suddenly smiled, a bleak, knowing curve that had no more relation to happiness than the earlier laughter. "Ah. But of course." He inclined his head in a grave sort of salute before his gaze drifted away again.

"...You've been dreaming about _me,_ as well." Saguru stepped forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kaito, head canted slightly.

The operative chuckled again, mercifully brief, and gave a sort of one-shouldered shrug. "You _—_ and you. Naturally. Wouldn't you know?" A beat. "Then again, _would_ you?"

Saguru appeared to ignore the commentary. "How long? Approximately three weeks?"

"Has it been?" Something in the smile shifted, though it didn't fade. There was an odd weight to it that subtly unnerved Kaito, something he didn't quite know how to name. Utter exhaustion was obvious, but... there was something more than that, something deeper.

The expression didn't feel like an act, either. That alone was strange... as strange as this entire encounter had been. What member of the Black Organization—what protégé of _Vermouth_ —could remain capable of openly showing something this genuine?

How could this be the same creature of the syndicate whose eyes Kaito'd been forced to see through, night after nightmare-filled night? The anger and mocking hatred and devil-may-care attitude had all given way to something... else.

Saguru merely shrugged at the man's reply. "I suppose it could have been longer, or shorter. ...When did it begin for you?" Kaito shifted uneasily, seeing the obvious reasoning. Had this man's dreams started at the same time as Kaito's nightmares?

The note in the sudden laughter the question provoked, louder and harsher than even that which had greeted them, made Kaito wish Saguru hadn't asked.

"When? _You_ ask me _when_? Oh, but shouldn't you know?" He turned to face them fully, lips pulled back almost into a rictus, eyes glittering. "Or no, perhaps _you_ wouldn't. Not yet, at least."

Kaito swallowed, hard. Something involving Saguru, or at least _a_ Saguru, that had started all this? The words escaped before he could think. "When you shot him."

The man froze, abruptly enough that Kaito almost wished he hadn't spoken at all, but then the brief humorless outburst dissolved back into the strange mood that had been on the operative since he'd caught sight of them.

"Ah," he said, almost softly, "that's right; you wouldn't know, after all, would you. Because you're not him. Won't be. Wouldn't be. Of course." The words slowed as he seemed to slip further into his own thoughts, his cadence oddly measured. His gaze shifted again, presumably to stare at Saguru; Kaito himself still didn't dare take his eyes off his deranged counterpart.

"I wonder if that's it?" He didn't quite seem to be talking to either of them, despite having not yet turned away. "If that's how it started, when I watched you..." He trailed off, but Kaito had the sickening feeling he knew exactly what he meant, and had to force down a shudder as a memory-flash of Sag—of the _other_ Hakuba's lifeless eyes tried to cross his mind. "Maybe it's your turn now," the operative went on, sounding almost thoughtful. "Maybe you need to see it happen to me, for it to end." The hand that wasn't still gripping deep furrows in the pillow darted out to the side, startlingly quick, and _how had neither of them seen that there was a GUN_ _lying amid the folds of_ _the blanket beside_ _him—_

Kaito's pulse pounded a jackhammer rhythm as adrenaline surged into familiar crystal clarity. Their quarry wasn't pointing the gun at them—for the moment—merely staring at the side of it contemplatively. That didn't stop Kaito from discreetly shifting position so that he could shove both himself and Saguru in opposite directions and out of the doorway. Which he promptly _did_ when the operative gave a careless flick, spinning the firearm through his hand and across his knuckles as though it were no more dangerous than a chopstick. Perhaps both were equally deadly in his hands and so this seemed a perfectly reasonable course of action to him; all Kaito knew was that clearly the man was _completely crazy_ and there was no point in expecting normal logic to apply in this room _._

Kaito halted his momentum before he lost line of sight, since the idea of _not_ keeping track of what was happening was still more terrifying. The syndicate member didn't seem to notice, eyes unfocused again even as he sent the firearm through a complex looping twirl around his wrist that no one sane would have ever contemplated trying to learn.

Kaito really, really wished he could see whether the safety on the thing was on. The gun was loaded, of course; he knew that with the same queasy, unnatural certainty as he did the precise feel of a blackjack impacting against a skull. But he was no longer sure how this man would have left the gun if expecting sudden, unfriendly arrivals... or whether he even cared about the possibility anymore. Kaito genuinely wasn't certain whether or not this unpredictable confrontation was less frightening than the last horde of Heartless had been.

"Would that be enough? If you saw?" The man's voice was soft, thoughtful, and completely failed to hold the appropriate concern for the gravity of the situation. Not when he'd just talked about _seeing the other Saguru's death_ and whether it was his own turn now. "It's hard to be sure. I didn't think it really mattered then, you know. Not at first, at least. But clearly it did. So who's to say?"

Saguru's voice was so level you could have used it to set a building foundation. "Even if things worked that way, would it count if you did it in a dream?"

The man froze for a moment, gun coming neatly to rest in his hand in the proper grip. He stared down at it briefly—turned it and stared almost absently _down the barrel_ and Kaito wondered whether his own grip was leaving dents in the wood doorframe—then tossed it completely up in the air in a complicated spinning flip and caught it.

_Twice._

When he finally put it back down on the futon Kaito almost missed it because he was focused too hard on not actually hyperventilating. It wasn't as though Kaito hadn't seen fancy gun tricks performed before, but there was a vast and crucial difference between confidence born of preparation and this unnervingly blithe unconcern for possible consequences.

"I didn't think this was a dream, at first," the complete lunatic continued in that same unsettlingly conversational tone. It looked like he was actually talking _to_ Saguru this time. Kaito was still too rattled to decide whether he found that an improvement, or whether he objected that Saguru had also returned to lean partially past the doorframe. "Not after what I'd thought was waking. But then, given that you're here, I suppose it must be, after all. Strange. I'd thought it was easier to tell. Perhaps something else has changed?"

He tilted his head a little, thoughtfully, gaze drifting back to the nothing off in the direction of the bare wall. When he spoke again, a chill ran down Kaito's spine at the apathy in his voice. "I wonder what's happening out there now. Really, I mean. Maybe _they've_ noticed. I wonder if they did finally come and find me, and I simply... wasn't conscious enough to realize?"

He paused, and looked in Saguru's direction again. "Is that it?" His voice was still light, almost curious, as if the question was something of very little consequence. "Would I know if I died while I was still dreaming? Is that what happened? What this is, and why you're here?"

"The dreams occur because something went very wrong," Saguru said carefully. "We're here to fix it. You are still alive, and we won't be able to fix the problem if you're not."

The man laughed, again, for the first time with something like a brittle, bitter edge. "Oh, I know what went wrong," he said, smile devoid of anything like hope. "And that's not something anyone can fix."

Saguru exhaled slowly.

"It was easier when I didn't know, you know," the syndicate member abruptly went on before Saguru could marshal a reply. He was actually looking at Kaito now, or at least in his direction. Kaito still wasn't certain what the man was actually seeing, or whether the strange new calm was really a better sign than the previous tension had been.

"I never got to be you." His tone was still conversational, if almost distant. "I never could have been. I started to see that, once I understood the difference. What it was supposed to be. Supposed to have been." Wistfulness seemed so strange when Kaito had _felt_ the cruel laughter that had lurked behind those eyes. But the nightmare mind he remembered would have scorned anything it saw as weakness, would have been unable to feign anything like this.

"It's always been too late for me, ever since that first day. They made sure of it. _She_ did." The momentary spark of resentment faded almost as quickly as it had flared, giving way to a weary resignation. "The first step... was already too far. There was no other path, after that. Not truly." An echo of a humorless grin passed across his face. "I thought I could win, you know. At first. Fought for it, got better and better at what I did. Until I forgot why I was fighting. Forgot who..."

He went quiet. Kaito still hadn't even formulated a beginning of a response by the time he added, far too matter-of-fact, "Maybe I should have been on that stage as well, that day. It would have been better than this."

Kaito froze with the certainty that he meant the stage the Organization had turned into a deathtrap for Touichi.

"Don't say that. Don't think it." Saguru sounded so reasonable, as though this should be obvious. Kaito wished he knew how he was managing it; Kaito was stuck somewhere between appalled and horrified. "If you'd died then, you wouldn't have made it this far. As long as you're still alive, you do still have a choice. A chance."

The man in black clothing laughed again, no more than a movement of breath this time, as though he no longer had the energy to give it voice.

"A choice? What choice? It's too far already, and far too late. There's nowhere else to go, nowhere to go back to. And to stay..." The unvoiced wraith of laughter, again. "This isn't a life. It never was. I just didn't know the difference."

Saguru exhaled, long and slow. "Maybe you are right, to be so certain of that," he ventured carefully after a moment. "You are closer to the matter, and certainly know more about what you can and cannot accomplish for yourself. But… perhaps it's not so impossible that, with assistance, you _could_ find another option. Somewhere else, something worth reaching for. Would you give us a chance to try, at least?"

Another dry, humorless laugh. "What good would a fool's errand do anyone? I couldn't stop you, I suppose." His tone dropped, gaining an edge of bitterness. "It's not like I have anything else to lose."

A small choked noise came from Saguru at that, though it was so quiet Kaito couldn't tell if the operative heard. The man wasn't looking at them anymore. "Such pretty promises," he murmured. "Such a lovely dream. Just like all the rest."

There was a long moment of stillness before he finally looked up again, wearing an expression that was all the more terrible for mimicking the curve of a smile. "I should thank you for that, I suppose. For offering. …Again. It was... good to get to see you again," he stated gravely in Saguru's direction. He hesitated, then added to Kaito, "and to meet you, in a way. Different. Strange, almost." His gaze fell away, as though he'd slipped back to talking to himself. "After this, though..." He paused. "I'm tired of waking."

Renewed alarm shot through Kaito as the syndicate agent continued, with increasing certainty, "Yes. I suppose I'm done with it. This is enough. The last. I don't want to, anymore."

Kaito heard Saguru's breath catch before it deliberately evened again. "Don't. Please. I don't want to see you do that."

A long, wavering moment stretched. Eventually, the man breathed realization. "...Ah. I suppose that might not be fair, mightn't it?" The statement seemed almost careless, holding little energy or inflection. "Yes. That does make sense. Not while you're still here."

Kaito couldn't think of anything to say, panic threatening to choke him. Not another death, not again, not even _this_ one...

The man still sitting on the futon sighed, remaining strength slowly draining from his posture to leave only weariness. Almost too quiet to hear, he said, "I'm so tired."

Kaito heard Saguru shift position and offer a quiet, sympathetic sort of sound in reply. None of them moved for the space of a few breaths, then Saguru shifted again and, with a calm that Kaito wished he could match, ventured, "Can I ask you for something else?"

The operative's eyes had closed. The only reply was more of a bowing of the head than a true nod, but Saguru treated it as permission to continue. "May I have that?" Saguru's arm extended through the doorway, pointing toward the gun lying clearly visible on the futon.

Kaito held his breath. The other man didn't even move beyond a brief flutter of eyelids.

"If you want it." The answer was dull, uncaring.

Saguru hesitated anyway. "...Please pardon the intrusion."

He inched forward, carefully, slowly scanning for any other unpleasant surprises, until he stood within arm's reach of the futon and could crouch to carefully retrieve the firearm, tension obvious in his frame. Immediately, what little of Saguru's face that Kaito could see drained of color before he, with utmost care, put the safety on. The tension stayed firmly in place even as he backed up to rejoin Kaito in the doorway and Kaito realized with a sort of horrified fascination that Saguru's previous calm was apparently due to not actually realizing they'd been inducted into an impromptu game of Russian Roulette.

... _Pity. Calm would be nice right now._

"Now what?" Saguru murmured out of the corner of his mouth, voice tight. "We can't leave him by himself."

Kaito carefully bit down on a full host of sarcastic responses to the statement of the _blindingly obvious_ and half-snapped, "Working on it. Bringing in someone from... _elsewhere_ is not a good plan for many reasons." Far too many complications could crop up if they dragged elements of any other reality into this one, assuming it was even possible in the first place.

Saguru started to say something, contemplated further, and subsided with a faint sound of unhappy agreement. "...Akako-san? She offered."

Kaito had been wishing that was an option. "She's not a traveler." Without any way for her to get back home on her own, if something went wrong... "Too risky for her to come. And bringing him _there_ is a bad idea all around."

His older, more worrying double was still slumped in place, apparently ignoring their conversation, but Kaito kept glancing back at him in case the previous fey mood returned. After the man's reaction to encountering just the two of them, putting him in a situation where he would meet others who'd evaded his horrors would be even worse. Akako had implicitly offered backup, true, but Kaito did not think that dropping a highly unstable Organization assassin in the living room would end well for _anyone_ involved.

Saguru apparently did still have a functioning detective's brain, because he didn't argue. "Who, then?"

Kaito would have been more impressed with that detective brain if it had any useful suggestions. " _Working on it_. Has to be someone local. There aren't many of those capable of handling him... Not ones that can be counted as allies, anyway, not when anyone significant on either side is... unlikely to be sympathetic."

A hiss of breath. "What about anyone capable but unaffiliated? Or any potential ally, even one not directly capable, who might be able to call on someone who is?"

"There aren't many unaffiliated, and not a whole lot of potential allies!" Kaito gritted out. "Most of the ones we might ask are unknowns, here, and the ones I do know about are too different. There just aren't many skilled enough to match him." Not when Vermouth had made her agent as deadly and elusive as she could, something that would have won him no friends in law enforcement. Jii wouldn't stand a chance, and Mizuki would be too much of a risk, if either of them were even still alive or in Japan at this point.

"We'd need someone we could trust to be willing and able to help. I'm not even sure there's anyone who knows both who he actually is and that he's still alive! The closest thing he has to an outside acquaintance, let alone any of the rest of it, is _Kudou_. How do you think _he'd_ react?"

Saguru winced. Not surprising, as he'd _seen_ that nightmare first meeting, the near-lethal injury that had left its permanent mark on Kudou, and the start of the twisted matches of cat-and-mouse—

Wait. That noise just then hadn't come from Saguru.

The syndicate agent was staring at them from the futon, motionless, eyes wide with sudden, overwhelming realization of horror. Kaito had just enough time to realize, with a sinking sensation, that his counterpart had clearly been paying enough attention to hear them before the man made a desperate, broken little sound.

Kaito went from merely glad that Saguru had dared to retrieve the gun to blindingly grateful as the operative grasped unthinkingly at the now-empty stretch of futon beside him, expression still frozen with horror. Kaito could only assume that that the full implications of his new perspective were just hitting him now.

And now the gears were turning in earnest in Kaito's own brain as he frantically tried to figure out what was going on, adding up all the unexpected changes from what he remembered from his own nightmares, all the little things the man had let slip since their arrival,l his unexpected reactions to their words, their presence.

His counterpart had clearly been dreaming as well, in apparent mirroring of Kaito's own nightmares. How much difference had those dreams made? The nightmares had been eating away at Kaito until he'd found Solomon's tea to block them out, at least temporarily. But he remembered what it had been like for him, being inside someone else's head, hearing what they thought and feeling what they felt. Here, there hadn't been that option; no escape from the dreams, night after night. Kaito also remembered what it was like to know the dreams were lurking, waiting to pounce and ruin any chance at actual _rest_ every single time he closed his eyes. Had it been as bad for his counterpart? Worse?

Except how bad could it really have been, if _his_ dreams were of—what? Seeing a normal life? Well, maybe not _entirely_ normal, admittedly, but... compared to the life the syndicate agent lived?

Then again, it wouldn't really have been just seeing. For the operative to have been put through Kaito's life... with the way those dreams worked, it would have been a forcible reminder of what it meant to have things to care about. To have _people_ to care about, people who might care back. For it to matter what happened to them. For them to be more than just broken dolls, game pieces, numbers on a collateral damage report to provoke irritation at a less-than-perfectly-clean execution.

Maybe for him, it had been like a slower, more insidious version of what Kaito's Change of Heart had done to break the conditioning forced on the Kudou that Vermouth had kidnapped from New York. The effect was eerily comparable, even if it wasn't the operative's _own_ memories and thoughts reasserting themselves, but the complete perspective of a life he'd never had.

Kaito swallowed hard as some of the things his counterpart had said abruptly slotted into a less nonsensical shape. That was the key, wasn't it? For this man, it wasn't the dreams that were the torment; it was _waking up_ from them. The worst part for Kaito had been the way the dream-perspective would stubbornly linger after waking, clinging as though it were truth; the toll on him had grown worse than he wanted to admit by the time the tea had afforded him a reprieve. A reprieve his counterpart clearly hadn't had.

Kaito tried to imagine an echo of his own mind waking to the knowledge that the Organization agent's life was the actual reality every morning—or no, even more often than that, how long would the man have even lasted each time before jerking awake again? The operative's memories had been distressing enough for Kaito, and he had known them to be nightmares. To constantly wake with a sensation of reflexive horror at your memories of your _real_ life, lack of rest eroding the strength of your own mind to push the feelings away and dismiss them as irrelevant, with no escape for weeks on end?

What must it be like, to have a heart you thought long-dead return to haunt you, inescapable no matter how you tried again to deny it?

With Kaito and Saguru in the room with the man now, blurring the boundaries between his dreams and reality, especially when they'd started discussing how they saw his situation... it must have shattered the last of his ability to avoid those realizations.

To be forced to acknowledge now what it had all really _meant_ , lives ended and crippled and pain inflicted merely because they had been in the way? The true shape of what he had done, everything that had been lost and harmed and irredeemably broken? Everything that was now forever beyond reach, by his own hand?

Kaito couldn't help but wince even as the wordless sound of pained denial rose to desperate keening. The operative was curling in on himself, the empty hand abandoning its fruitless search to twist violently in his hair.

Kaito traded only a frantic, dismayed glance with Saguru before he dashed into the room, already searching for—yes, he had two canisters of Kid's knockout special among his supplies. One was already about a third spent, but the second aerosolizer was reassuringly full, and he held his own breath as he administered the full dose as close to the man's face as he could. It was the only small mercy available; though it would still last all too briefly, Kaito knew from experience that the formula would bring only peaceful unconsciousness, with no dreams before it wore off.

The near-shriek of distress subsided to something between a whimper and a sob, and the operative finally went limp, slumping sideways into a pile of pillow and limbs. Kaito watched for a few extra moments to be sure, carefully loosening the man's grip from his hair to check his pulse.

It was steady, which put it in significantly better shape than the rest of him.

 _...And leaves us back at square negative-one with limited time, no resources here, and not a lot of options. This won't last long, we need_ help _. There has to be someone in this nightmare that can make a difference. Someone,_ anyone _please_ exist _, I don't care where or who—_

 _:Kaito-kun!:_ The panic in Méraud's voice startled Kaito from his frantic _reaching,_ pulling his attention back to conscious awareness. :You're throwing yourself open to the Shadows! You don't know what you're risking, casting out blindly like that! You have to stop this—:

 _I have to help!_ he snarled back, not sure and not caring if he was speaking aloud as well. _This—everything about this is just_ wrong _! I can't leave it like this! I_ can't _!_

— _tiny glittering shards of diamond on black velvet, unscratchable until just the right force shattered everything beyond repair—_

The Shadows roiled as he threw himself back into searching, _reaching_ , trying to find someone, something, _anything_ familiar enough to be worth trying for. Anything that felt like _help._ To have come so far and helped so many, only to fail in the end at the crux of everything? There _had_ to be something, someone, _some_ way to _fix_ this.

 _Anything_.

It was like groping through a window into fog and darkness and the unknown, things he couldn't grasp or distinguish shifting about him like whispers. Even as he tried, Shadows and focus slipped through his grasp like wind and dust and moonlight reflected in water, tantalizing hints of what might serve as what they needed wavering just out of reach.

:Kaito-kun!: Méraud sounded as frantic as he was. :It's too dangerous, too risky, Deepdark only knows what you might _find_ out there, or what might find _you—_ :

 _If something can help, I don't care_ what _it is!_

Because this was wrong, this was _wrong_ , this was all too wrong to be allowed to _exist_ ; it had been utterly wrong in nightmares, and was somehow worse still now that they had arrived to find not a smirking Organization threat but a man on the brink of destruction. None of it should ever have been, none of that nightmare-memory spiral of destroyed lives, theft and explosions and coercion and death, and _damn_ the paradoxes, it should never have fallen out this way to begin with!

Even his counterpart agreed, and Kaito's mind flinched from the terrible calm with which his black-clothed could-have-been had just spoken of whether dying together with his father would have been better than allowing what he became instead.

 _No_. That was not an acceptable option; it wasn't _necessary_ ; all that it would have taken to avoid _all_ of this was for Vermouth to never have reached him that day, as she'd never reached Kaito himself back home—

For a moment his own memory of that day choked him: the confusion, the panic, the _loss_ —

Something echoed it, fleetingly, something like a glimpse of a matching shape, a resonance.

Kaito pursued it, wild hope and frustration mingling as it slipped beyond reach, but he'd _seen_ it, however briefly, sensed it more clearly than anything else so far, surely if he could push a little farther, reach just that last bit more—

: _Kaito-kun!_ :

Kaito hadn't even realized he'd been reaching physically as well as mentally, leaning forward as he knelt by the futon until he was suddenly already off-balance, tipping forward into a churning void of manifest Shadow. There was shouting, his name, arms wrapping around his waist, but it was already too far – no floor, nothing to brace against, just the unstoppable tilting and the sudden soft shock of leaving the air of a world for the stuff in between.

And then nothing else but falling, spinning through the dizzying vastness of Shadow, his desperate reach sliding through a kaleidoscope of everything and nothing.

They had passed through a patch of Shadow before, briefly, on their way to finding Sora and Axel. This was nothing like that, no more than walking through an airport was like being thrown out mid-flight into open, storming sky. Kid had flown briefly in rain and storms and gusting winds, when there was no other choice. It had never gone well.

He had no glider now. The great currents that churned between space and time dwarfed worlds, and they were no more than two helpless, infinitesimal motes caught amid the surging tides.

And yet they were also that fraction closer to that elusive hint of a possibility to _fix_ it, fix _all_ of it, and he strained, reaching desperately for it even as roiling Shadow whirled them about like they were a speck of dust in a typhoon, even as all else slipped from his hold, leaving only the memory of the nightmare and its aftermath and the unrelenting need to remedy it. Nothing caught, the mental _reach_ flailing aimlessly in search of that familiar echo, as unchangingly, tantalizingly close as stealing the moon from the sky.

There was a sudden impression of great wings and scales, as insubstantial and undeniable as the Shadows that carried them. :You'll be lost beyond recovery, you _fool!_ Here, use this, you've no other anchor, and you'll never catch solid enough hold for an exit otherwise!:

Kaito had no time to react to the unaccustomed desperation in Meraud's voice before something was pressed into his mental grasp. But—he would have to give up his other reaching to take hold of it—

: _NOW!_ :

The strength of emotion in her command decided him, insistence and panic and frantic urgency compelling him to seize and _pull_ against whatever tether this was, this single solid line through the chaos, and throw everything he had into reaching _exit-realworld-safe_ with every iota of impetus a powerful downbeat of frantic dragon wings could send against the storm.


	11. A Mirror Darkly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Snickerer and RandomImagination for invaluable beta-work.

_Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind_  
_Cannot bear very much reality._  
 _Time past and time future_  
 _What might have been and what has been_  
 _Point to one end, which is always present._  
~Burnt Norton (I.44-48)

* * *

Falling at the ground and missing was not, in fact, anything at all like flying.

Saguru concentrated on not opening his eyes. The combination of weightlessness and queasily unpredictable momentum was bad enough without adding visual input, even mitigated by the sunglasses currently being squashed against his face. Swearing, however, helped, until there was an abrupt jolt and their momentum _shifted_ , gaining something like purpose. With an impact of air, abruptly there was gravity again, and wind, as their remaining speed carried them briefly perpendicular to that gravity. His eyes flew open to see dirty brick and concrete—

And then suddenly, wall.

Lots of wall, smacking hardest into his shoulder blade and hip while Kaito's torso did its best to crush and smother him. All that kept the concrete below from saying a sharp hello to their skulls as well was what felt like a convenient pile of trash bags. Saguru assumed Kaito had tried to aim for 'safe', again, and decided to simply be very grateful for the lack of concussion. The inability to breathe properly and myriad bruised muscles and bones were more than unpleasant enough.

"G'off," he wheezed, impact having already broken his grip around Kaito's waist.

Kaito obligingly rolled off with a grunt and looked around. "...Huh."

"What?"

Kaito hesitated, taking advantage of the pause required to wolf a protein bar. "I'm not sure where we are."

Saguru paused to check that his lungs were, in fact, back in working order, and then stood up. "Then _how_ did we get here?"

"I was trying to find someone who could help." Kaito moved to examine their entry point, his back to Saguru, which at this point was essentially admitting that there was more to it.

Saguru reigned in a growl and instead dusted off his clothes with meticulous care. "This is precisely what sharing your plans prior to their execution does _not_ look like, Kuroba-kun."

"This wasn't a plan!" Kaito scrubbed a hand through his hair. "All I wanted was a way to fix this, and... it got away from me." He peered further up into the portal still hanging at an angle in the air above them, or what Saguru at least assumed was something like a portal. It didn't look much like Kaito's usual Shadowrifts; those tended to be reminiscent of irregularly-shaped doorways to another place framed by thin haloes of obscuring distortion. This looked more like a cloud of wavering haze with swirling depths of an unsettling sort of nothing that Saguru found his eyes sliding away from in self-defense. He had no idea what it looked like to Kaito.

Kaito continued, "I... think I can get us back again. Probably. After we figure out what's here on this side." A guilty look flashed across Kaito's face. "Only as far as not-me, though. I—I think I lost hold of the first one, somewhere in there, the connection to Koizumi—it was too much all at once, or something, and it slipped, and now I can't feel it anymore."

Saguru pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache. At least if it was closed, Koizumi couldn't come after them and turn them into chinchillas for losing track of their potential backup. "Why is determining where we are at this moment integral to our ability to return?"

"Because I _was_ looking for someone to help," Kaito said. "I got distracted, but this might be our best chance to actually find someone remotely useful. I just need to know where we are."

Saguru gave a long-suffering sigh. It was hard to argue with the fact that without some sort of native help, this trip was threatening to become significantly longer and more complicated. "Then please be sure not to let _this_ one close, and let's be quick before he wakes up and starts wondering what might happen if he walks into the blurry patch of air."

Kaito shivered slightly. "Right." He took a moment to gingerly sweep the portal smaller. It didn't seem to work quite the same way as it did for the regular ones, but the haze did seem to thin and narrow until only an odd, but far less obvious, wavering patch remained slanted in midair. Kaito studied it for a moment more and then, apparently satisfied, headed out of the alley. Saguru sighed and followed, only to nearly run into Kaito when Kaito stopped dead, staring up at the large TV display on the building across the street.

"What now?" Saguru reached into his jacket, then remembered far too late that he'd dropped his staff in the operative's room when he'd lunged after Kaito. His hand closed instead around the gun he'd taken earlier. He carefully left _that_ where it was.

Kaito turned, face nearly white. "Today—it's tonight. I—he—tonight is _you._ The other you. Come on!"

Saguru barely managed to snag Kaito by the arm before he could take off running. There was only one nightmare involving his counterpart, and he certainly understood why Kaito might wish to change it. Wishing, however, could not make a crazy idea any less so. "And do _what?_ If he's supposed to be dead, then what do you plan to do about it? You'll be changing the past of where we just left, to say nothing of our own!"

"That's what I came to do!" Kaito almost snarled back before freezing.

Saguru's eyes narrowed. "I seem to recall you said you were trying to find someone who could help," he said evenly.

Kaito looked away. "I was. It... went strange, while I was reaching. So I tried to find a way to just... _fix_ it all. Only I couldn't get all the way there, just this far. But we're here, and... we _have_ to fix this much, at least. We _have_ to." His expression was set.

Pinching the bridge of his nose again would require letting go of Kaito. "And you're not worried in the slightest about, say, paradoxes and causing the timeline or the universe to collapse?" Saguru was going to limit himself to only minor exasperation. He was.

Kaito gazed back at Saguru, eyes gleaming with fervent purpose. "All we have to do is find a way to fake it convincingly, right? He walks away certain that it's a dead body, and he'll just assume the cleanup crew dealt with keeping the consequences to only a 'missing person' status. And we save you, and... maybe that'll get us a way to convince the other guy that he just might still have a chance to be something more than a lost cause. This you would have the skills to keep up—and he already made the offer to help once."

Saguru considered the idea, deliberately ignoring the way Kaito had just referred to a cleanup crew as if it were an everyday occurrence. Kaito did have a point about their options with the operative, which were distressingly limited. And it was hard to ignore the appeal of not being dead, even if it was merely his counterpart.

"Well... it's possible, in theory, but... what about the practicalities? He'd notice a vest or at very least the lack of blood, even assuming we could convince my counterpart to wear the cursed thing, or take him out and put _me_ in one. Which isn't what you had in mind, is it?"

As Saguru had been talking, the gleam in Kaito's eyes had shifted from desperate to more calculating. By the time Saguru finished Kaito had already pulled out his Duel Deck and was leafing through the cards, pausing only to shudder briefly at the mention of Saguru himself facing down the Organization operative.

While Saguru had never doubted that Kaito (or Kid) did his best thinking in a crisis or when backed into a corner, he was reminded of it now as Kaito snatched two cards out and shoved them at Saguru's face. "These. Here. I can make this work. It was meant to be a fallback for a fallback, in case I had to stage my retirement this way, but it should be exactly what we need..."

Saguru plucked the cards out of Kaito's hand and moved them to a saner reading distance. The first was _Half Shield_ —halve all battle and effect damage for a turn—and the second was _Copycat_ , which did exactly what it sounded like and created an exact double of a chosen target. Technically it was supposed to be a target belonging to the opponent, but given that this was _Kaito_ , if he thought he could make it work regardless... well, it wouldn't be nearly the most bizarre thing Saguru had seen him pull off.

With a little logic, it was easy to see what Kaito was going for, even if it wasn't precisely a cheerful thought. "So… you think the _Half Shield_ could absorb enough damage that a doppelganger wouldn't disappear immediately after a fatal injury?"

"That was the idea, yeah. We just have to get there fast enough to catch him, first, but I can do it. I swear, I can do this." Kaito paused. "…If I have one of the elixirs."

"I would _hope_ you'd use one, considering what you've already done today." Saguru eyed Kaito critically. Color had at least crept back into Kaito's face even if he still seemed worn, and his determination was no less strong for having lost the edge of desperation. Saguru decided that arguing further now would only waste precious time without, in all likelihood, altering the outcome in the slightest. "Fine. Let's get to the site and see what our timetable is, but if you push yourself too hard doing this, I will be _very_ put out."

"Deal. Now come on!"

* * *

Tonight, Saguru discovered, meant "in approximately thirty-seven minutes and twenty-one seconds." The one and only positive aspect to Kaito's dreams was that he knew exactly where they needed to be, several blocks away, and how long they had before the operative arrived via the roof. Given the nature of the trap, it seemed that the police wouldn't close in on the building until he was inside. Kaito knew the building's own security well enough that once they arrived, they were able to sneak inside and make for the upper floors in the remaining small window of opportunity.

Saguru found himself unaccountably amused that he was, technically, participating in a Kid heist, and the target was _himself._ The surrounding circumstances were hardly humorous, but he had to appreciate the irony. If he didn't focus on that, he'd start thinking about all the deadly ways this insane plan could go wrong.

Kaito eased open a stairwell entrance and looked inside. "Here," he murmured, tension belying the muted volume. "He comes in from the roof from here, and on the way out..."

Saguru stepped up behind him. "I see. There's still time, so if you don't mind, I'd like to get a better look at what we're dealing with."

Kaito hesitated, eyeing the landing above, before nodding reluctantly. "There's not much to see."

"And yet." Saguru slipped by and carefully climbed to the top landing, taking in every detail of the concrete and steel, the roof access door and the mechanism automatically locking it from the inside, the fire extinguisher on the wall by the roof access sign, the door labeled _Maintenance Only_ just beside it... "There."

"What?"

"We can use the maintenance closet to wait. Unless it's checked?"

"...No. Just straight for the target."

"Then we won't risk running into anyone else until the proper time."

"Yeah... okay." Kaito sidled up to the closet door and peered at the lock for a moment, then produced a lock pick from nowhere and made short work of it. He straightened, glancing over his shoulder, and Saguru took the cue to pull the door open.

He immediately found himself looking down a gun barrel wielded by Inspector Hakuba Saguru, who was standing at the ready with such a flatly unimpressed look that he must have heard their conversation outside. The look only lasted for the moment it took Saguru's appearance to register and then instantly shifted to shock, though Saguru was oddly pleased to notice that even shock wasn't enough to make the Inspector lower his weapon.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" he demanded.

Kaito slipped around Saguru with the fluid grace Saguru always associated with Kid's poker face, his hands raised disarmingly. "Look, there's a really good explanation for this; I just need to give you my ID, okay? I'm just going to get it out of my bag..."

Saguru did have to admit that he had a weakness for giving people the benefit of the doubt unless proven otherwise. Or at least he tried to, when he could. His counterpart seemed to still have the habit, because Kaito's slow movements were permitted as he retrieved a small wallet using a finger and thumb. Inspector Hakuba didn't even lower the gun when he used the other hand to carefully take the wallet, but before he could open it, Kaito's other curled fingers shifted too fast for Saguru to properly follow. A brief spray of pink mist engulfed the Inspector's face, cutting off as soon as the man started to go limp. Somehow, Kaito managed—without dropping the aerosolizer—to catch both Hakuba and the wallet before they could hit the ground.

Saguru moved to help, making a mental note to remember that trick with the palmed aerosolizer even as he removed the gun from the Inspector's now precariously-loose grasp and stowed it safely away. It clacked softly against the other gun in his pocket. Saguru had to take a second to wonder just how he'd managed to start an illegal collection of dubiously acquired firearms. Probably since Koizumi had appointed him the sensible one, however counter-intuitively that worked.

The most immediate threat disarmed, he began to examine the rest of the closet more thoroughly as they arranged Hakuba's limp form against the nearest shelf. There were three walls of shelves filled with equipment, a cart with more tools and electronics shoved against the back shelf, and, in the tiny floor space that remained unoccupied, a small folding stool with a laptop standing sideways beside it.

"Why such a limited dose?" Saguru asked as he shifted to reach the laptop. "We have thirteen minutes and forty seconds before the operative is due, and that looked like perhaps five minutes' worth."

Kaito looked up from adding something into the lock of the handcuffs he'd already secured Hakuba with—a move Saguru appreciated, since otherwise the handcuffs would most likely be picked within moments of the man waking up—and sighed. "This is all I've got left, and it's maybe half-full by now. I'd rather save it in case we need it with... _him_ , again."

"Fair enough. We may require a gag, then, as judging by how he was waiting for us, this door appears to not be fully soundproof..." He trailed off at the sight of the laptop screen. It was split three ways, showing the room where the gem was displayed, a second room Saguru assumed was just outside the display room, and the top stairwell landing with the camera focused on the access to the roof. That would have shown them from behind while climbing the stairs to approach the roof access, explaining why Saguru's face had still come as a surprise to the Inspector, but...

"Kuroba-kun, I thought you said there were no cameras in the stairwells of this building."

Kaito blinked at him. "There aren't. Only at the entrances on the lower floors, which we dodged. The top five floors are penthouses that don't do security cameras anywhere inside, just guards, for the privacy of the clients. It's why he came from the roof; the roof camera was on the outside and easy to take out."

Saguru turned the laptop around so Kaito could see the screen. "I think now we know why the alarm went off when it wasn't expected."

Kaito actually _cackled._ "Wireless cameras! Of course he added his own cameras, the bastard—that is _so you._ "

Saguru couldn't exactly argue. He'd used the same tactic for several heists when he'd had enough forewarning, though Kaito had managed to render them effectively useless via disguise or other interference.

"Thank you, I think. However, we should check for soundproofing regardless." He confirmed that the laptop was muted and stepped outside, shutting the door behind him. "Can you hear me? We have approximately eleven minutes and thirty-seconds until arrival time, and—"

The door cracked open and Kaito stuck his head out. "Yeah, you're just quieter, but here's the silent alarm for the rest of the force. It was in his coat. So, we'll get about five minutes to convince the good Inspector to stay quiet, or I'm gonna be down to even less gas than before."

There was a groan from behind Kaito, and Saguru quickly pocketed the palm-size alarm and darted back inside on Kaito's heels. "Significantly less, with a resistance like _that..._ "

"You've always had high resistance; part of what made you a challenge." Kaito casually sat on Hakuba's legs, in exactly the place Saguru knew would interfere the most in getting leverage, and waited until the Inspector's eyes blinked open. "Hi. I'm really sorry about the handcuffs—"

"Are not," Saguru muttered before he could stop himself.

"—Okay, _mostly_ sorry about the handcuffs," Kaito corrected smoothly, "but it's really, _really_ important you not go out on that landing tonight, or you're going to die."

Hakuba, unsurprisingly, stared at him. "You're mad."

Kaito's answering humorless grin was probably not very reassuring. "Only a little. And I'm still right about this. That impossible ghost-thief you're tracking? You got it right. He's coming here, tonight, but if you meet him it's going to end very badly for you."

"How can you know that? Who _are_ you?" Hakuba's brow furrowed. "...Your face is familiar..."

Saguru had never seen someone manage to stagger while seated until Kaito abruptly did so, face draining of color. "Kuroba-kun?" Saguru murmured carefully, watching them both. How could the Inspector recognize him, when they'd never had the chance to be classmates here?

Inspector Hakuba's eyes widened, furrowed brow smoothing out in sheer surprise. "Kuroba _Kaito?_ "

There was a moment's pause.

"Yes," Kaito answered, voice oddly flat. "Though not the Kuroba Kaito who was kidnapped from his father's death scene when he was eight, because he's the one coming down those stairs and he's not ready to listen to your offer of help. Yet."

...Oh. Yes, that was right; Kaito had said the Inspector had, in that nightmare, actually managed to identify the operative after getting a look at his face. Apparently that hadn't been just a fluke.

The man's gaze darted from Kaito to Saguru and back again. "...You can't possibly exist."

"You obviously never became closely acquainted with Koizumi Akako." Kaito quickly waved off Hakuba's confused expression. "Not important. What _is_ important is that I'm really Kuroba Kaito, and that's really also Hakuba Saguru, and there are no words to express how very _not okay_ I am with you ending up dead."

Inspector Hakuba gave Kaito a considering, if rather dubious, look.

"We can prove it," Saguru stepped in. "In," he checked his pocketwatch, which garnered a dark glare until the Inspector realized that his own watch was still safely tucked away and his expression changed to surprise, "approximately nine minutes and twenty-two seconds, he'll arrive. Five minutes and three seconds after _that_ , he'll be back in this stairwell, proving us right. Give us those fifteen minutes and a chance to explain, and if you still don't believe us, we'll release you."

Kaito gave him a betrayed look. "We'll _what?_ "

"We'll release him if he doesn't believe us," Saguru repeated, "because the odds of that occurring are so miniscule I won't even bother to quote them." He met his counterpart's eyes and was relieved to see a spark of curiosity mingling with the distrust there. He smirked, carefully. "On my honor as a detective."

"Your... _detective?"_

"Yes. Now, if you would swear on _your_ honor to cooperate without interference for the next quarter-hour and change, I promise you will receive your explanations. By then, you will have witnessed more of the evidence for yourself."

Saguru felt he did quite well at weathering the moment of intense scrutiny before the Inspector sighed and leaned back against the shelf. Kaito, in contrast, had pulled out his Duel Deck and was ignoring them both with the air of an offended cat. "Fine," Inspector Hakuba said. "I will expect a _complete_ explanation, particularly into how you can be so certain of things that have yet to occur. On my honor as a police officer, if you remove these handcuffs I won't step out of the closet for the next fifteen minutes."

"Or attempt to interfere or interact with your colleagues until after we can explain," Saguru prompted, earning another look.

"Are you going to do anything else illegal, beyond assaulting an officer?"

Saguru paused a moment to be certain he could answer truthfully. "No more than impersonating a police officer, the necessity of which you'll observe shortly."

"Imper—you cannot possibly intend to walk out there yourself."

"What part of 'Dead Not Okay' did you miss?" Kaito snapped without looking up from sorting his Deck.

The Inspector managed to fix them both with an impressively level stare. "So what, precisely, do you have in mind?"

Kaito did finally look up in response to that, smile more bleak than Saguru was at all comfortable with seeing on him. "We'll make sure you both see exactly how it would have gone if you _had_ followed your plan for tonight."

The Inspector did not look as though that answer was at all sufficient. "And _how_ do you expect to be able to accomplish that?"

Kaito's smile widened slightly, growing just a little less frozen. "Ah, but that would be telling."

The Inspector's raised eyebrow in response spoke volumes. Unimpressed volumes. Saguru found himself rolling his eyes, though he managed to refrain from calling Kaito a twit out loud. Or reaching over to smack him upside the head.

Instead, he smoothly interjected, "His taste for theatrics aside, he really can do what he says. Honor the agreement, and you will see. And afterward you will get your explanations." He tilted his head slightly, employing a detective's even smile. "Do let me know, at that time, if anything in the scene you will observe deviates from what you would indeed have done."

"I can't help but notice you have yet to actually explain what the bloody hell you plan to _do."_

Saguru's smile didn't waver. "Call it... an illusion. An exceedingly convincing one. I wonder if you will be able to work out how it's done?" He turned away from the Inspector, deliberately casual, moving to adjust the laptop so that the screen would be visible to all of them. The Inspector was almost certainly trying to determine whether he could bore a hole in Saguru's head with the force of his stare alone. Saguru let him, hoping that the bait to the Inspector's curiosity would be enough.

One breath, two breaths, three breaths, easy and even; he kept his expression composed and stance relaxed with the practice of long hours in a classroom with a talented amateur magician doing his level best to direct attention exactly where _he_ wanted it.

At forty-six seconds exactly, Saguru heard the resigned sigh from the Inspector, and carefully did not let his smile widen in triumph.

"Fine," Hakuba bit out. "We'll play it your way, for as long as it goes the way you say it will. Take these off, and I won't walk out, or interfere, as long as I don't see something that you haven't told me about that requires me to intervene."

"And you will stay silent, no matter what happens to the illusion?"

"...Fine."

"Agreed, then, on your honor and mine." Saguru gave a deliberately formal nod.

"Yes, yes. Get on with it."

Saguru treated him to the smile he used on Kid and particularly obnoxious reporters and held out a hand in Kaito's direction without looking. When a little bottle landed in his palm precisely on cue, he applied the contents to the keyhole without missing a beat. A moment to bend the stiff wire from around the bottle's neck into shape, a few more to maneuver it properly through the just-softened goo filling the keyhole, and he was rewarded with the expected click as the cuffs released.

The Inspector stared at him appraisingly as he reclaimed his wrists, pulled his legs in and apparently settled down to observe. After a moment, he added, "I expect my gun back as well."

"In due time," Saguru murmured placatingly. A thought occurred to him, and he added with his most trustworthy professional smile, "If you are able to remain completely silent when there is any chance of our scheduled visitor overhearing, I may trust that your self-control is such that neither of us will regret my returning it to you."

"Hnn." The Inspector looked less than pleased, but he refrained from pursuing it further for the moment. He seemed to want an explanation more than he wanted to try overpowering both of them, which was good enough for now.

The next five minutes and seventeen seconds passed in silence. Kaito remained hunched in the corner with his Deck, while Saguru and Inspector Hakuba alternated between staring at the laptop screen and staring at each other. The Inspector's eyebrow rose fractionally as he eyed the sunglasses Saguru had almost forgotten were pushed up onto his head. God only knew what the man was thinking; Saguru supposed the story behind that would just have to be added to the promised explanations. For now, he merely shrugged and raised an eyebrow of his own in answer. The Inspector frowned and returned his attention to the views from the cameras.

Then, finally, the door to the roof creaked quietly open. The man in Organization black slipped inside, bare-faced, and ghosted down the steps to the floor holding the gem.

This was not the broken figure they had just left behind in the bedroom of that barren apartment; this man moved with intimidatingly sure, deadly confidence. The contrast was almost a physical shock, and Saguru nearly shivered at being reminded who truly haunted Kaito's nightmares. Only when another soft click denoted that the operative had left the stairwell did Saguru realize he'd been holding his breath, and he let it out in a rush. A quick glance at Inspector Hakuba showed that the man had questions burning in his eyes, and he was scrutinizing Kaito's face again with a great deal more care. However, he'd obviously taken Saguru's condition about the gun seriously and was taking care to hold his tongue. Good.

Saguru rummaged through his bag for the second-to-last of their elixirs and handed it off to Kaito, ignoring the Inspector's expression at the brightly colored liquid inside. (He really had become the _de facto_ Keeper of Important Things, it seemed.)

"Are you ready?"

Still seated, Kaito looked at the vial in his hand for a long moment. "No. But let's play a Game anyway." He downed the entire contents of the elixir and turned away, blocking their view of his actions, but Saguru was certain that Kaito was dealing out a hand from his appropriately-stacked Deck.

There was a pause. Then a sudden charge in the air like too much static electricity gathered in one place, making the hair of Saguru's nape stand on end. It vanished after another moment, leaving in its wake the Copycat of Inspector Hakuba standing in the last corner of unused closet space. The Inspector hissed in surprise, hand darting to the empty holster under his coat. Saguru found he couldn't much blame him. The likeness was disturbingly exact, save for the eerie lack of expression in the double's face.

Kaito looked back and forth between the two a few times, then tilted his head to the side. It was like flipping a switch, the way the Copycat came alive in a flurry of movement, reaching into his coat and pulling out an equally disturbing replica of the gun safeguarded in Saguru's pockets before sighting down the barrel into the floor.

"It's fake," Kaito assured absently without taking his eyes off the Copycat. "Nothing to fire."

"I should certainly hope not!" Saguru retorted, still fighting against uneasiness even after the Copycat stowed its supposedly illusory weapon away again.

Kaito summarily ignored him, turning further toward the Copycat and closing his eyes with a frown. Saguru realized after a moment that Kaito's lips were moving slightly, silently, far too fast for normal speech. With a sinking feeling, he glanced back at the Copycat. Its lips moved in perfect, silent synchrony with Kaito's for a moment, paused, then synchronized again as it apparently rehearsed its lines for the upcoming confrontation. Three times they spoke in soundless unison, three times the Copycat stood motionless while Kaito continued on. Then Kaito stopped too, sagging back slightly as he sighed, and Saguru recognized for the first time how very _brief_ the exchange was going to be.

Brief, though nothing like easy.

Saguru eyed the slump in Kaito's posture, not liking how it reminded him of the nightmare Kaito was about to have to reenact and its broken shadow still waiting for them beyond the portal in the alleyway. Nor did he appreciate the fainter reminder of Nightmare, and how deeply Kaito was still affected by his failure to save even a blackmailing thief who'd been actively trying to _murder_ _him_.

Saguru took a deep, steadying breath, and ventured, as lightly as he could manage, "Well, then. Even for me, this is going to be an unusual view of a heist."

Kaito's head jerked around toward him, startled. Saguru offered a hint of a smirk. "After all those times you went on at me in class about being the most skilled of magicians, to say nothing about thieves... well. It seems to me that one would need a thief _and_ a magician, to be able to steal a future."

He paused, reran that sentence through his mind, and let his smirk widen. "Steal _back_ a future."

Kaito stared at him for a long, wordless moment before letting out a huff of breath too disbelieving for a laugh and looking away. Still, Saguru didn't think he was just imagining the renewed determination in the set of Kaito's shoulders as he drew himself up and returned his attention to what he held.

So softly that Saguru would have missed it if he hadn't been watching for it and straining to hear, Kaito murmured, "I play Copycat in defense mode and a card face down."

The floor on the other side of Kaito wasn't visible, and so neither was precisely what the magician had done there, but Saguru had the distinct feeling he knew exactly what he would see if he got up to look. He had no need to do so, and so he merely watched as the Copycat reanimated, stepping past to slip outside and closing the door behind it.

He switched his attention to the laptop, where the camera feed showed the perfect double of Inspector Hakuba taking up a waiting position on the landing at the top of the stairs. It was easier than making eye contact with the real Inspector, who looked like he was seriously weighing the promise of explanations later against the overpowering urge to demand them _now_ , gun or no gun. He'd even risen to his feet, serving only to heighten the perfect resemblance between the two figures. Saguru watched him closely, but the Inspector ultimately opted to hold his tongue and continue observing, if with slightly ill grace.

Saguru was glad of that. Though the Copycat was played in defense mode and on the other side of the closed door, he wasn't sure that it would stay that way if the Inspector tried provoking Kaito. Especially not with Kaito's current appearance of one stretched precariously close to a breaking point.

Without the confines of a proper Game, Saguru wasn't sure what a summoned Duel Monster could potentially do in defense of its summoner—though it didn't seem like what Kaito did with the cards was orthodox, even by the Motou's standards. Of course, this was Kaito. He appeared to object to conforming to any sort of rules on sheer principle.

Saguru dismissed his mostly-irrelevant musings when the laptop screen abruptly showed the thief slipping confidently into the room just outside the display area, not even bothering to sneak as he passed beyond the camera's view toward his target. Then there was a gap as he traversed the blind zone between the cameras, which had clearly been chosen more for discreet installation than for their angles (limited) and controls (nonexistent). The interval stretched for longer than Saguru had expected, and he was starting to wonder if something had gone wrong when the man finally reappeared, strolling straight up to the gem case. Perhaps he'd taken a moment to evaluate the security, because he went straight to work.

...It was almost an art form, the way he bypassed the last lines of defense on the case as though they practically weren't even there. Saguru couldn't help but admire the deft expertise, even as he internally counted down the seconds until he could alert the police.

Movement in the background distracted him. He scanned for the source, and frowned sharply as he caught sight of part of a figure that hadn't been slumped on the ground at the edge of the monitor the minute before. He couldn't see much, mostly a shoulder and a partial glimpse of a head, but that uniform—

"One of the guards is down!" he snapped, hand reflexively slamming into the silent alarm in his pocket, mind racing. If the officers summoned by the alarm got there fast enough, if they distracted the Organization agent, maybe the guard would still have a chance; Kudou from the previous reality had said he'd survived partly because the Organization members he'd run into hadn't stuck around to properly confirm his death.

A faint, wounded noise distracted him, and he had only enough time to glance up and see Kaito's eyes gone wide before the magician shoved himself closer, yanking the laptop partway toward himself as he switched from the split-screen to a full-size feed of the display room. Saguru's breath caught as he saw the edge of a smear on the wall barely within the camera's field of view, and a dark wetness on the floor just beneath the guard's shoulder that could have been taken as merely a shadow in the smaller view.

The puddle wasn't growing.

A minor injury wouldn't have produced that much. An injury that had yet to be fatal would still be bleeding. Saguru spat a harsh curse without thinking, echoed perfectly by Inspector Hakuba, who looked positively livid from having clearly reached an identical conclusion.

"You come and assault me, swear impossible knowledge of tonight and that you're trying to save my life, and you couldn't prevent _that?"_

"I—I didn't know," Saguru answered, feeling numb. Kaito'd never mentioned it, why hadn't Kaito mentioned it? Saguru tore his eyes away from the body to look at Kaito, who had slumped down against the wall, knees drawn up against his chest, face chalk-white.

"Forgot," Kaito rasped. "Head's full of the stairwell, the only bit that mattered at all to _him_ , can't get it out for anything else _,_ just on repeat again and again and again. _.._ "

"All right," Saguru interrupted briskly, because there was too much else important going on for Kaito to be distracted by raging guilt. They could deal with guilt later when Saguru could remind Kaito that regardless of magic or sheer force of will, things called _limits_ did in fact still actually apply to Kaito. "Focus. We weren't expecting that, and whatever we might have wanted to, we can't do anything about it now. Remember what we _are_ here for. Are you still up to it?"

Kaito gave a harsh little chuckle, letting his head fall. "But it only went that way in the first place because—it makes sense now, don't you see? He only made that offer then because he didn't _know_. Otherwise... if he had..."

Saguru reached over to briefly give Kaito's shoulder a rough squeeze, because if Kaito wasn't grounded enough to do this, they were in for worse things than an enraged police officer. "Fine. Maybe that will make a difference, and maybe he won't agree to help us now. So. Tell me, how will that affect what we came here to do tonight?"

There was a full beat of shocked silence. Then Kaito actually uncurled a little, head popping up as he first stared, then let out a shaky, startled, more genuine laugh. "It doesn't. Not at all."

Saguru smirked back at him. "Do remember who we're actually trying to fool here." While gaining the Inspector as an ally would be ideal... as long as they kept him alive, and the Organization operative still saw exactly what he would have if they had not interfered, it would still count as success for them.

Kaito scrubbed a hand over his face, grinning just the faintest bit. "Right. Of course. Heh. Can't believe I'm hearing this from _you_."

"Someone has to be the sensible one."

Kaito rolled his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall, clearly rebuilding his concentration for the approaching confrontation.

Saguru let seriousness fall back over him and turned back to face the Inspector, who looked like he was keeping his expression short of outright hostility through sheer force of will.

"I suppose I must add a caveat, now. What you will see is what would have come to pass if you had had no more knowledge of that than we had." He frowned. "And... it really should have occurred to me before. We can't stay here, afterwards; it won't be safe, and we'd be overheard. Will you agree to at least accompany us to a safe place for your explanations, and the return of your sidearm? You will of course be free to go afterward, though I sincerely hope that by then you will better understand the dangers that made all of this necessary in the first place."

Inspector Hakuba gave them both another superbly unimpressed look bordering on suspicion, arms crossed, but ultimately acquiesced with a sharp, tight nod.

Saguru lapsed back into careful silence himself, returning his attention to the laptop to switch the feed for the view of the stairs, and not a moment too soon. The door to the stairwell slammed open only seconds later, and Kaito went utterly still beside Saguru as the Copycat on the camera feed simultaneously snapped up its gun to confront the approaching operative.

"So, even invisible thieves can follow a pattern."

Even though Saguru _knew_ the Copycat was speaking, could see its lips move in perfect synchrony with the voice, he found himself darting an automatic glance at the Inspector. Who was clearly too stunned to be anything but silent, promise or no promise, from the way he was staring at the monitor with wide eyes.

"Hakuba Saguru." Saguru twitched at the voice, so close to Kaito's and yet so unutterably _wrong_. The man they had met before had been dangerously unstable; this version was clearly in complete command of himself. Saguru honestly wasn't sure which version he found more unsettling. "Son of Police Superintendent General Hakuba. Youngest officer of the force to reach the rank of Inspector when at age 22 he succeeded Nakamori Ginzo. Engaged to his daughter, Aoko. You had a life waiting for you, Inspector. You shouldn't have thrown it away."

Saguru found himself oddly grateful that he couldn't see the operative's face through the recitation of the mini-biography. Another quick glance revealed the same couldn't be said for Kaito, who had curled in on himself with his head bowed in a way that couldn't possibly let him see the laptop screen. Saguru's stomach twisted just a little as he realized Kaito must be seeing through the Copycat's eyes, forcing himself to face down the nightmare as if he were truly the Inspector. ...Saguru devoutly hoped it was being done as something like an extension of Kid's impersonation tactics, or a way to better monitor whether the operative reacted as expected, not some strange sort of undeserved penance.

"Your face is familiar..." Saguru heard the Inspector's sharply indrawn breath even as he did his best to suppress his own wince. Well. That certainly explained why the comment had affected Kaito so dramatically earlier.

"Kuroba? Kuroba Kaito?" the double continued with evident surprise, Kaito's lips also moving in silent tandem. The tone shifted, disbelieving wonder taking on an undercurrent of urgency. "Aoko, she still keeps pictures of you on the walls at the house, talks about how you disappeared when your father died. She thinks of Mizuki-san like her own mother, prays at your memorial every year. You… What _happened_ to you?"

Saguru swallowed back a wince and couldn't help but look away from the feed again to check on Kaito. The sight was hardly an encouraging one, as Kaito seemed to have gone from a huddle of concentration to simply a huddle, head fallen to rest against his knees, hands clasped tightly against his neck as if the pressure was all that kept him from simply coming apart. Saguru found himself moving without thinking, one hand checking that his glasses were still safely in place as he shifted position to just beside Kaito. He carefully draped the other arm around Kaito's shoulders and pulled it as tight as he dared, trying to offer whatever additional grounding he could. He belatedly remembered the Inspector's watchful company, but just as quickly decided he didn't give a damn what the man might think—if he even _noticed_ , what with the tableau outside—because Kaito needed the reminder that he wasn't alone, and that he wasn't _this_.

"When idealism killed a man, his son gave up that path and sought to never die."

There was a pause. Saguru realized he was holding his breath again and forced himself to breathe, slow and steady, as close to silently as possible.

Outside, the operative continued with a faint note of regret that seemed more genuine than feigned, "I'm sorry to hurt Aoko, but we are invisible."

"We? Kuroba, whoever took you, whatever happened, it shouldn't have. Come back with me. We can help you."

Saguru craned his neck to see the screen, where the operative stood frozen while the Copycat Hakuba took a tentative step forward to the edge of the stairs, hand outstretched and gun lowered just the slightest of fractions. In the silence, it was almost possible to hope, foolishly, that the offer of a way out would be enough, that the operative would actually accept—

Police footsteps echoed on the stairs below, pounding upwards.

In an eyeblink the operative fired and surged up the last few steps to catch the Copycat before the gun could drop and clatter on the ground.

"I'm sorry." The murmur was almost too soft to hear through the door. "You should have stayed home. Tell my father I haven't forgotten him?"

Saguru swallowed, hard, and forced himself to continue watching as the man lowered the (thankfully still intact) Copycat to the ground and continued on to the door to the roof. The man paused partway through the doorway, a black figure silhouetted against the night outside, and looked over his shoulder with an unreadable expression for a long moment. Then he was gone.


	12. Negotiations

_Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,_  
 _Round the corner. Through the first gate,_  
 _Into our first world, shall we follow_  
 _The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.  
_ ~Burnt Norton (I.19-22)

* * *

The door to the roof finally fell shut.

After taking a moment to master himself, Saguru turned to coordinate leaving before any officers arrived. However, Kaito's hand suddenly clamped his wrist with such fierce urgency that he winced at the pressure. His enquiring look was met with a sharp, silent headshake before Kaito held a finger to his lips, watching the doorway. Saguru's internal count of the seconds reached seventeen before Kaito exhaled, releasing his grip. "Okay."

"What was _that_ about?" Saguru demanded, massaging his wrist. "The stairway was clear. Though it _won't_ be, in a minute."

The fallen Copycat vanished from the view of the camera feed as Kaito shrugged, looking so worn that the elixir from earlier was likely the only reason he wasn't out cold. "Méraud said to wait until she said it was safe. She was pretty adamant about it. Figured that after everything else so far, I should listen to her for once."

Saguru sighed and decided that pushing for details wasn't worth the time. "Fine. Let's go now, at least."

Kaito scooped up the cards and stood to face Inspector Hakuba; Saguru could almost see his public face coming back up as his expressions shifted. "Do you know a way we can all get out of here unnoticed and unrecorded? Because if you don't, we'll have to resort to our methods, and... well, those are best reserved for emergencies."

Inspector Hakuba didn't look enthused with either option, but he nodded stiffly and tucked his laptop under his arm. "Follow me, then."

Their exit was slightly more nerve-wracking than their earlier infiltration, as there was a particularly bad moment getting out of the stairwell and a close call with two extremely drunk apparent residents. However, Inspector Hakuba's knowledge of the building and the police search patterns was enough to get them out without any real fuss. The alley they'd appeared in wasn't very far away from the building, and once they made it there free of pursuit, Saguru breathed a sigh of relief. Something had been managed at last without notable complications. The alley was empty, and the still-wavering distortion slanting through midair appeared to be undisturbed.

Relief was short lived, however. Hakuba stepped close enough to loom over them—an impressive feat, considering he had perhaps three centimeters on Saguru at most—expression gone dangerous with tightly-leashed fury. "I've kept my end of the deal. On my _honor_. Now you keep yours, and tell me _what the bloody hell you are playing at_."

"Tell me," he continued after a pause, voice dropped dangerously low and eyes boring into Saguru's as if trying to find the truth there, "why I was required to stand aside and _let him leave_ , free and clear. Tell me why, when there is a man _dead_ at his hand in that room, I shouldn't be out there hunting him down right now before he kills anyone else!"

A bark of something that couldn't really be called laughter caught them both by surprise, shifting their mutual attention to Kaito. "Because you won't have to."

The Inspector's eyes narrowed. "And what, exactly, do you mean by that?"

Kaito was silent for a long moment, expression downcast. "We know where he'll be. And how to get there, and he'll go to pieces fast enough that no one else should be hurt in the meantime." Hopefully that was true; Kaito was in the best position to know how the operative would behave after a high profile murder, apparent or not, so best to not question that progression in front of Inspector Hakuba.

The Inspector's eyes remained narrowed, considering but giving away nothing of his own opinion. "How do you know all this?"

Kaito opened his mouth, considered the Inspector, closed it again, and turned to Saguru instead. "Maybe you'd better explain this one. He might not appreciate my answer very much."

If Kaito had been about to ask if Hakuba believed in magic, at least he'd realized how that would go over before he'd actually _said_ it. Saguru restrained himself to a slight sigh. "I would recommend starting with a demonstration." He gestured at the closed portal. "If you would."

Kaito eyed it for a moment, then stepped back with a faint, shadowed smile. With perfect showman's grace, he clapped his hands together and then pulled them apart from palm to fingertip with a neat flourish, the warp expanding silently above him to its full, original extent.

The Inspector stared at the motionless seethe of nothing. "What..."

Given that Kaito (and possibly Riku) apparently saw something completely different, it had been a bit of a gamble to presume that an alternate counterpart would have a comparable experience to his own. However, from the way the Inspector was blinking, expression faintly strained as he attempted to observe what Saguru had personally labeled an eye-melting twist in space-time and subsequently given up on... well, it seemed close enough.

"This is... call it a wormhole, if you like," Saguru said as Hakuba stepped closer to inspect it, and promptly grabbed the man's wrist before he could try _touching_ it. "Ah—I presume you are familiar with Clarke's Third Law regarding the interchangeability of magic and advanced technology, Inspector? I'd advise you to treat contact with it with the same caution you would unfamiliar technology, because all I can tell you is that proper use apparently allows wormhole-like travel... and I have utterly no idea what _improper_ handling of one might do to you."

"A wormhole." Hakuba's voice was flat as he clasped his hands tightly behind his back and paced a circle underneath the portal, face upraised to take in everything he could. Even then, he never entirely turned his back on either one of them.

Letting him complete a full circuit, Saguru continued, "So. May I ask you to accept, for the duration of this discussion, that boundaries of technology, laws of physics, and common sense may not apply in the fashion that you are accustomed to?" It took some effort, but he not only managed the request with a straight face, he even succeeded in not eyeing Kaito pointedly at 'common sense.'

"I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't a dream," Hakuba grumbled. "It's too mad to be anything else, not when it's beyond explanation by even a very elaborate trick."

That really would be all they needed, having to deal with _both_ their counterparts being convinced the whole mess was imaginary. Saguru let Kaito's pained, breathy laugh pass without comment; of anyone, Kaito had the right to be tired of this night appearing in dreams.

"We haven't gotten to that part yet," Saguru said dryly. "And if you start in on that line of reasoning too, we'll be here all night. Treat it as a lucid dream if you really must, but I'd not advise you to expect to wake up and find that all the upsetting things have gone away."

"That would just be far too easy," Kaito grumbled, a hint of wistfulness creeping in.

For a long moment Inspector Hakuba remained silent, staring up toward the distortion above them. "Suppose I do presume that the _how_ of your story may involve such things," he said slowly. "You have yet to explain your purpose. _Why_ was any of this necessary?"

Kaito actually glared. "I told you, and you _saw_ —if we hadn't—"

With an impatient gesture, Inspector Hakuba interrupted, "Not _that_. You wanted to keep me from dying. Well and good. But surely that could have been achieved by simply keeping me away. Why was the rest of that whole charade necessary?"

Saguru allowed himself a slight, rueful sigh. "Honestly? Rather a muddle of circumstances, accident, and my best attempts at keeping the entire mess from getting completely out of hand."

The Inspector stared, motionless but for one slowly rising eyebrow.

The expression was far too familiar from seeing it in mirrors and TV interviews to be terribly effective; Saguru shrugged. "I suppose I should start the explanation from something resembling a beginning. If you're willing to accept what you hear."

The Inspector's gaze flicked pointedly from the impossible portal to them—the impossibly too-young doppelgangers—and he motioned wordlessly for Saguru to hurry up and get on with it.

For a moment Saguru attempted to organize his thoughts, as the whole situation was worse than a spider's web. "I assume you've worked out by now that we're, ah... not from around here." He took the Inspector's unimpressed stare as confirmation and went on, "The circumstances are a long story, but suffice it to say that there was something of a mess involving the time-space continuum and we got very, very lost. While trying to get home using some of the tricks we acquired during the mess in question, we landed here instead. Except... not exactly here and now."

Slipping a hand into the pocket where Saguru habitually stored his pocket watch, Inspector Hakuba glanced back up at the portal and sighed. "Fine. What _was_ your landing point, then?" The dull resignation in his tone was as good as an admission that he'd realized where this was going.

"Several weeks from now." Kaito's counterpart had been hazy about the flow of time, and their personal timelines were quite obviously out of sync given the five year difference in age, but... the clear disparity only made it more likely that after the initial inception, whatever connection existed between Kaito and the operative had been experienced over the same span of subjective time. Having seen how badly off Kaito could be after a single nightmare of that sort, with days between each, several weeks of relentless exposure without a moment's reprieve could easily be enough to unhinge even a stable psyche. Kaito might be functional, but he didn't particularly qualify for 'stable'.

Watching the Inspector's face carefully for reaction, Saguru continued. "We've never done this before, and I'm sure you know the theories as well as I do. But it seemed only reasonable to assume... You see, tonight—or what would have happened tonight—was a catalyst for more of what has already happened to us than I have any hope of explaining without extensive diagrams and a great deal more time. Once we understood the situation, however… well, as Kuroba-kun has mentioned, leaving matters _entirely_ as they were was unacceptable. However, simply eliminating the incident would destroy the sequence of events that gave us the knowledge to make the attempt in the first place. So, to change that world, while still trying to avoid the risk of merely splintering off and leaving it behind or destroying it via paradox... the obvious recourse was to make our change, and yet keep the timeline from finding out."

"Hence that little pantomime," the Inspector said slowly. "For _his_ benefit. And that's why you didn't want me contacting any of my colleagues—so that no one would realize I survived." His eyes narrowed suddenly. "But you didn't leave a body. Or blood. If you did indeed follow the original chronology, then you've already changed things—those officers on the stairs would have discovered the aftermath."

Saguru exchanged a glance with Kaito, who took a deep breath and stepped forward to answer. "It's possible," he admitted, "but a missing body should produce the same reactions from anyone we need to worry about as a dead one. After this—after tonight—as long as there's no evidence that you're alive, everyone should draw the necessary conclusions for events to remain consistent with what we saw." It had held true with Kudou, after all, and no body at all was better than one disappearing out of a body bag.

The Inspector's stare turned suddenly forbidding. "You want to keep my survival a secret. So then what, exactly, were you planning to do with me once we finished this little debriefing session?"

Caught off guard, Saguru blinked back at him. "...We'd rather hoped you'd agree to come back through that portal with us?" He hadn't actually intended for that to be a question.

"Did you." Inspector Hakuba had the patient look Saguru usually reserved for listening to criminals who were slightly unhinged. "And it never occurred to you that I might possibly have _objections_ to losing weeks of time in the blink of an eye? To leaving my colleagues without a word, my _family_ worried and anxious without any hint of explanation, let alone reassurance?"

Perhaps they had not considered the other possible outcomes to this plan thoroughly enough.

"You don't understand!" Both of them turned at Kaito's outburst. Kaito stepped closer and met the Inspector's gaze with his own determined glare. "That's what will _protect_ them. The more it looks like you and anything you might have found out are gone permanently, the better! It's nothing like a long-term solution, but for a few weeks? When they'll be watching closely after an operation with such a high-profile casualty? You don't _want_ the people you care about to look like they have some reason not to be worried! The more clearly they all have no idea what really happened, let alone who might have been responsible, the less likely they'll be considered potential threats!"

"Threats?" Inspector Hakuba repeated, skeptical.

Kaito shook his head, that horrible bleak note creeping into his tone. "You have no idea what these people are like. How do you think your 'ghost-thief' has gone unknown for so long, to say nothing of the ones pulling his strings? As far as they're concerned, anyone who survives an encounter is an unacceptable information leak. If they had any reason to suspect you had, they'd kill _anyone_ you might have told in a neat little series of tragic accidents. Your parents. Inspector Nakamori. _Aoko."_

Inspector Hakuba's eye twitched at Kaito's familiar form of address for Aoko, and he scrutinized them intently for a long moment. "If I knew as little as you seem to be implying, I would never have connected that... ghost-thief to Inspector Nakamori's injury, nor tracked him down accurately enough for tonight's encounter. You're very concerned with him, and what he knows. And you said you know where he'll be." His stare turned hard. "So. What exactly is your stake in what happens to him, other than claiming to bear his name?"

The line of Kaito's mouth went flat, his face smoothing into a neutral mask. Saguru suppressed a wince at the sudden drop of emotion and did his best to answer without succumbing to the newly developed tic of confirming his sunglasses and bronze chain were securely in place. This would be so much easier if Kaito didn't trip over Hakuba's mulish streak every five seconds. "You have to understand, from our point of view, there's... there's a lot that's gone wrong, here." He sighed. "I think Kuroba-kun's been fairly clear about his sentiments regarding any Hakuba Saguru dying."

Kaito's expression said very emphatically that they had _better_ be clear by this point. Saguru took that as a good sign and continued, more quietly, "It might be less obvious to anyone who's never seen events unfold otherwise, but... what was done to the Kuroba Kaito here was no less wrong."

"What was done _to_ _him_?" The Inspector's tone was blatantly incredulous.

Saguru only kept from angling between his counterpart and Kaito by reminding himself that there was no point and Kaito likely wouldn't appreciate it at all. "However you may wish to think of him after what you just saw, the you that would have stood at the top of those steps was more right than you might suspect. The Kuroba Kaito here, the one who was once your Aoko-kun's childhood friend? He _was_ taken, by people who should never have touched him at all. They broke him and indoctrinated him more thoroughly than you would have believed possible."

"...You're talking about brainwashing." Inspector Hakuba's voice was once again flat, though whether from disbelief or horror was impossible to say.

"Something of that nature," Saguru allowed. "But you came closer to putting a crack in that conditioning than anything in _years_. Maybe just a hairline crack, but..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "But of course you never had anything like the chance to use it, the way that it went."

"Clearly."

Saguru chose his words carefully, mindful of the Inspector's steel deadpan and familiar skepticism. "You didn't, but it appears that someone—or some _thing_ —did."

"Really." The Inspector didn't look any happier about this conversational turn than Saguru had expected. He forged on regardless.

"There's more about the history that you should probably know. About—how it started, and how it went wrong here, and how it all should have gone instead." Saguru glanced at Kaito, who wasn't looking at either of them, but the fractional head tilt in his direction was as good as permission, and he turned back to the Inspector. "The short version starts with Kuroba Touichi, called by some the greatest magician in his generation."

"Kuroba Kaito's father."

"Yes." Saguru nodded, moving on without missing a beat. "And a man sought by these same people for his skills, which he refused to lend them." He paused, glanced at Kaito again, but continued, "His death was not truly an accident."

"...I see." He sounded about as pleased as Inspector Nakamori did when confronted with a Kid impostor. Which was to say, not at all.

"You don't, yet. In our history, everyone accepted it as an accident, until Kuroba-kun found a message his father had left, and decided to follow in his footsteps and thwart their goals." Saguru didn't try to lighten the grimness creeping into his tone. "But here, rather than leaving him behind, they _took_ him. Instead of working against the ones who cost him his father..."

"He was made their pawn." Inspector Hakuba looked like he was barely warding off a migraine. Saguru winced, remembering a very different chess analogy from Kaito's dreams, but nodded.

The Inspector exhaled. "So _that's_ what he meant, earlier, about idealism killing a man. You're saying that being reminded of what happened to his father made him reassess his situation?"

After a moment's hesitation, Saguru ventured, "Ah. In a manner of speaking. You... might have trouble accepting this part of the explanation."

Inspector Hakuba stared at him for a long, level moment before glancing back up at the portal still floating in all its eye-twisting glory above them and back. He didn't actually say ' _This_ part?' out loud, but the unspoken implication was clear.

A few steps of pacing bought some extra time to contemplate more palatable phrasing, but was ultimately futile. "I believe I mentioned that the circumstances of our arrival and the paradox were... complicated. This is part of it. As far as I can determine, my Kuroba-kun here and the one we encountered at our, ah, landing point had been exchanging memories in dreams for several weeks before we actually arrived. From this night going forward."

The Inspector's stare was the flattest yet before he pinched the bridge of his nose in a very familiar fashion. "Of course they have," he muttered, low enough that Saguru wasn't certain he'd meant to let it slip out.

A helpless shrug seemed the best response. "I can't explain that one, yet. I can only assume that it is related to why we did land here in the first place instead of getting home as we initially intended. But—neither of them reacted well. For Kuroba-kun, they were terrible nightmares. For your ghost-thief... whatever he found in them"—freedom, family, camaraderie? Saguru wasn't sure he entirely wanted to know—"seems to have undone his world at the seams over the course of those few weeks. Finally understanding that you offered him his only real chance at an alternative in years, only for him to have..." Saguru trailed off, and finally just shook his head. "He is not well," he finished quietly.

"...That is indeed quite a story," Inspector Hakuba said slowly, favoring them with another long, measuring look. "But none of that tells me why I should not bring a known killer to justice. Suppose I do go along with your... _request_ , and allow myself to be whisked weeks into a future where everyone believes me missing or dead. What, exactly, do you want from me?"

The billion yen question, really. Saguru sighed. "What I want," he murmured, "is to be able to leave here with a clear conscience. I want to leave you able to return to your own life, and the Kuroba Kaito here safely out of their grasp for good, wherever that turns out to be. For that to be possible, this organization needs to be taken apart. The threat won't end, otherwise—if you did manage to arrest him, whether now or as soon as you find him on the other side of the portal, how long do you think they would let that stand? They would just destroy everything in their way and take him back—or write him off as a loss, already too compromised to remain useful, and simply eliminate _him_."

Saguru shook his head slowly. "No. For this to do any good, regardless of what you end up deciding to do afterward, _they_ need to be taken down first. If you factor in what we know, and what we can do... it's not impossible to at least set you down that path. But it'll require _both_ of you to actually pull it off." He met Inspector Hakuba's gaze unflinchingly. "Which means we need you."

"You want me to work with him, you mean." The Inspector looked thoroughly unhappy. Saguru took that as a cautiously hopeful sign; if the man had already made up his mind against it, he would have merely appeared obstinate.

"I'm afraid so. We'll need his help to make it work, after all. And... if you want him functional enough to assist with everything required for you to safely resume your normal life—frankly, if you even want him to survive to the point it would be _possible_ to take him into custody, let alone manage anything close to testifying—well. At this point, I think you're the one person who'll have a solid chance."

"Oh?" Inspector Hakuba asked guardedly.

"Under the circumstances, especially given the dreams…" Saguru offered another helpless shrug. "I'm fairly sure he assumed the two of us were hallucinations." Logic would dictate that the state of mind necessary to create visual, auditory and _tactile_ hallucinations would be at the level of fluffy pink unicorns doing the samba with Nyan cat, but the man had been understandably lacking in logic at the time.

"...Given tonight, I fail to see how he would interpret my presence any differently."

"True enough," Saguru admitted. "But even in that eventuality, you would still be one that he would _listen_ to."

The Inspector grimaced. "Even if I grant you that, I still don't have to like it. You want me to what—view him as an asset? An informant? A _victim?"_

"He may be all of those things, but... perhaps start with thinking of him as a person." He risked another glance at Kaito, whose previous silence would have felt ominous if not for it being a miracle he was still upright and conscious.

Kaito smiled, wan and tired rather than the tight-lipped way he hid disapproval as Inspector Hakuba made a noncommittal noise and responded, "Perhaps."

Saguru took a deep breath. "So, will you come?"

The Inspector glowered up at the portal as though he was blaming the entire situation squarely upon it, probably not at all unjustly. "The explanations for my miraculous reappearance are going to be _your_ responsibility. Including ensuring that they are of a caliber that will guarantee that various parties will not decide to _actually_ kill me for making them believe I was gone for good."

Saguru smiled wryly. "I'm fairly sure we'll be able to manage that." Breaking a criminal organization like an egg was a very reasonable explanation, particularly for Aoko and Inspector Nakamori, provided they could make it truth.

"Fine, then. How do you plan get _through_ that thing?" He gestured at the portal, which continued to waver unhelpfully just above head height.

Saguru quirked an eyebrow at Kaito, who inspected the arrangement thoughtfully. After a moment he rummaged through his supplies, pulled out another protein bar, and walked several steps to study it some more while absently chewing. Saguru paid no heed to the Inspector's eloquently skeptical expression and waited.

After finishing the protein bar, Kaito nodded at Saguru. "I should be able to hold a regular rip open too, at least long enough to start us back."

Saguru nodded in acknowledgment, then glanced at the Inspector and frowned thoughtfully. The journey through wilder shadows had been unpleasant, and only heaven knew what would have happened had he lost his death grip on Kaito's waist. Presuming their return would be much the same... "We need to make sure we don't lose you along the way."

"Well, _that_ doesn't sound ominous at _all_."

Saguru ignored the muttered complaint in favor of sorting through his own supplies. He paused, eyebrows rising in speculation as he retrieved the handcuffs Kaito had used earlier, and glanced between them and Inspector Hakuba.

He was met with a spectacularly uninviting glower. "You _cannot_ be serious."

"Why not?" Saguru asked reasonably. "They should work perfectly well, and it's not as though we can't get them back off easily enough afterward."

He could almost _see_ the Inspector biting back at least three responses. Hakuba finally settled on, "We haven't even started, and I'm regretting this already."

Saguru snapped one side of the handcuffs onto his own wrist anyway, and politely offered the other open cuff. The Inspector eyed it with about the enthusiasm he might allot a rather-less-than-fresh dead squid.

Before Inspector Hakuba could make up his mind, something suddenly attracted his attention toward Kaito, his eyes widening. Saguru felt the sudden shift of energy in the air and turned just in time to see Kaito gesture to summon the other Shadow portal. The horizontal rent opened at ground height, echoed perfectly by the exit flickering in high above them, centered directly over the indistinct cloud of the time-portal.

The Inspector took an unconscious step forward in clear fascination; the new shadow-rimmed hole in the air gave the illusion of opening into a shaft that duplicated the concrete walls of the alley well below the level of the street. Saguru looked up instead, where the shadowrift just above their original entrance revealed the corresponding view of Kaito as seen from below. "Hm. That's going to be interesting. Still better than the alternatives, I suppose."

Kaito studied the relative positioning of the portals, then nodded. "This should do it. Might be a little bit of a bumpy ride, though. Are you ready to go?"

Saguru turned back to Inspector Hakuba, still holding out the open cuff. "This is your last chance for second thoughts," he said quietly. "I still think it would be a spectacularly bad idea for you to stay here rather than come with us, but... this will be a one-way trip, and I did make you a promise." He carefully felt in his pocket with his free hand, found the Inspector's firearm, and offered it barrel-down. "You have your explanation, your sidearm, and your choice, as agreed."

The older man reclaimed his gun without hesitation, efficiently checking the mechanisms and ammunition before shifting to sight briefly at a patch of unoccupied wall. Apparently satisfied, he holstered the gun and glanced back at Saguru. "...Thank you."

"I do keep my promises, insofar as I can," Saguru replied, shifting the handcuff to glint in the light.

"So I see." Inspector Hakuba regarded Saguru for another long moment, then let out a sharp sigh, stepped back toward him, seized the free cuff, and snapped it around his wrist. "Let's get on with it, then."

Saguru smiled politely, as careful to keep his relief from showing as he had been to hide his concern that the Inspector would truly walk away. While he had been a relatively agreeable listening audience, the active cooperation necessary to have any hope of succeeding in this venture could not be coerced with a hostage sidearm. For him to have agreed after all, at this point… they might actually have a chance at pulling off the whole mad scheme.

Kaito glanced at them as they arrived at the edge of the portal near the ground beside him. "Ready?"

"I believe so."

Kaito gave them a critically assessing look. "Hmm. That is a good idea, actually." He shifted closer, taking hold of the chain linking their wrists, and snapped one half of another pair of handcuffs around it before attaching the other to his own wrist. "There we are! Now we shouldn't have to worry about losing _anyone_ to turbulence."

Saguru found himself slightly distracted by the suspiciously familiar look of the newly-employed handcuffs. He was certain his own pair had been in their designated pocket the minute before, but—no, a lightness there verified that this was no longer the case. He was tempted to raise an eyebrow at Kaito, but was fully aware it would have no effect whatsoever.

"Any final advice on how this works?" Inspector Hakuba directed a dubious glance down toward the portal, and the view through it of the eye-twisting anomaly nearly a dozen apparent feet below them. "And are you certain it's supposed to be... quite that far away?"

"It should help. I think." Kaito shrugged, eying the distance with more appraisal and less trepidation.

"Hold on tight, and I recommend keeping your eyes closed," Saguru advised the Inspector. "It'll be less upsetting that way,"

Hakuba shot him a vaguely dour look, but offered no protest as Kaito took hold of their arms and declared with entirely too much carefree cheer, "On three!"

Hakuba took a deep breath as Kaito counted. He shut his eyes, listening, and jumped, letting himself move with the grip on his arm. He had just enough time to grow accustomed to the freefall before they plunged from the air of the alleyway into the strange space between worlds.


	13. Kaleidoscope's End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued thanks to Snickerer and RandomImagination for their invaluable help.

_Descend lower, descend only  
_ _Into the world of perpetual solitude,  
_ _World not world, but that which is not world,  
_ _Internal darkness, deprivation  
_ _And destitution of all property_  
~Burnt Norton (III.25-29)

* * *

Their return journey resembled the first trip, though with less chaotic spinning, something resembling a definite trajectory, and a shorter duration. However, when they finally made it back out into reality, relative momentum somehow placed Saguru on the bottom of the dogpile. Again.

" _Off."_ Once free, Saguru took the chance to breathe and be grateful he wasn't claustrophobic. "My ribs hate you."

"Sorry," Kaito offered distractedly as he made short work of both handcuffs. " That still went better than I'd expected. Not _nearly_ as bad as the trip there."

Inspector Hakuba stopped scrutinizing the room to give Kaito a look of mild horror. "That was _better_? How exactly does this _work_ , anyway?"

Carefully sitting up, Saguru sighed. "...You probably don't want to know, beyond that Kuroba-kun was responsible."

Hakuba considered this. "You're right. I don't. _Yet_ ," he qualified as Saguru checked for signs of the operative's location, since the anaesthetic gas would have worn off in their rather unplanned absence. Seeing the man still out cold on the futon stopped Saguru short.

"Kuroba-kun, exactly how long is a full dose intended to _last_?" Sliding to the futon, he hesitated only a moment before carefully checking for a pulse. Thankfully, it was there, and about as steady as might be expected for a man who looked like he'd been through all nine circles of hell.

"Well... it depends," Kaito hedged unhelpfully. "Also, here." He offered Saguru's handcuffs back.

"Estimate for me," Saguru replied as he finished timing the pulse and retreated to accept the handcuffs.

"In addition," Inspector Hakuba interrupted, holding out a hand, "I'd like _my_ handcuffs back, thank you."

Saguru blinked as Kaito returned the pair he'd used on the Inspector in the first place, momentarily distracted. "Those were yours?"

"Whose did you _think_ they were?"

"When it comes to Kuroba-kun, I've mostly given up on asking."

"I find myself unsurprised," Inspector Hakuba admitted, securing the handcuffs before he opened the window blinds and peered outside. Saguru found himself blinking again at the unexpectedly minor change in brightness in the room and turned toward Kaito, the beginnings of suspicion rising.

Frowning at the still-unconscious operative, Kaito answered, "The gas usually lasts between fifteen and thirty minutes, since I'm trying to avoid side effects. I'm not sure why he's still out; we tried to get back as soon as we could, but we were still there for a good..." He trailed off, eyes losing focus as he presumably listened to either Méraud or Lupin, and then blinked. "Really?" Another pause and a slight wince before he blinked again, shaking his head. "Ah. Okay. So, apparently the whole time-travel part is..." he winced again, " _really_ not recommended, and... doesn't really work the same way as the portals I usually make."

"Seeing as how the normal ones show where you'll arrive don't include the spinning-hyperspace-freefall part, I had rather assumed that, yes," Saguru agreed dryly.

"Right, right," Kaito said as he waved it away, only mildly chastised. He seemed to be doing much better than earlier; proof that he could and _had_ made a difference against the nightmare here must have helped. "Seems like it's something to do with aiming at the same entry point we used to leave in the first place, so—as far as this place is concerned, it looks like we got back right after we left."

Inspector Hakuba crossed to the futon and raised his eyebrows, looking between them. "Ordinarily I would suspect you were using an earpiece of some sort to apparently pull information out of thin air, but I don't believe there's anyone for you to be talking _to."_

Saguru considered how well explaining the Shadow Realm was likely to go over at this point. "Do you remember what I said about picking up some tricks?"

"...Yes. Unfortunately."

"It's due to one of those. It can be quite helpful." Saguru shrugged for the second time in as many minutes. "I can give you the full explanation later if you want it, but it's probably best saved until we all have the leisure for it."

"Mmm." Inspector Hakuba seemed to have settled into a base state of general resignation. He might have said more, but at that moment the unconscious operative shifted on the futon and a tense silence fell. As they waited, Hakuba studied the operative's face intently with an unreadable expression, pausing only to glance at Kaito a time or two.

Previously, the Inspector's only glimpse of the other man had been the brief appearances on camera during the heist. Even with the man sedated, it was clear that the last few weeks had not been kind to him. The light from the window only made the grey pallor to his skin more obvious, with stark highlights and shadows framing an expression that remained drawn and tense even in unconsciousness.

Seconds stretched into a minute, and then two, and then finally Hakuba's shoulders dropped. "This is ridiculous. I'm going to check the perimeter."

Saguru met Kaito's eyes and gestured that he would shadow the Inspector. There was no real reason not to let him study their present location, but Saguru still felt wary about letting the man out of sight. Kaito nodded, moving out of their way without taking his own eyes off of the unconscious operative. Saguru spotted where his staff had fallen on the floor earlier and quickly retrieved it as he passed, collapsing and pocketing it as he followed the Inspector out of the room.

The main room was no less spartan than it had been the first time, and it was a mix of disappointment and relief to realize that Kaito had been right: any trace of the portal back to their _other_ older counterparts was gone. The prospect of potential experienced backup had been an encouraging thought stepping into this situation, but now there was no chance of anything from this place getting anywhere near the children.

Inspector Hakuba checked the one window and even opened the front door to examine the hallway outside the apartment, assessing entrances, exits and what was visible of the skyline outside. He also retrieved his mobile phone and hissed under his breath when the screen displayed the date and time. Saguru debated about commenting, but caution remained the highest priority.

"Unless you can prevent GPS tracking for your phone, it would be wisest to turn it off or disable it entirely."

Hakuba grimaced, but seemed to take the point and hurriedly shut off the power and removed the battery before returning to the bedroom and leaning against the door frame. "We still have some time before he regains consciousness?"

Kaito nodded from his vigil by the futon. "At least ten minutes, unless his tolerance is as good as yours."

"About that... what exactly did you _use?_ I've never heard of an aerosolized anaesthetic that works so quickly, nor one that leaves an aftertaste of _cherries._ "

Saguru raised an eyebrow at Kaito. "You finally managed something other than 'old socks' and I didn't hear about it?"

Kaito flashed an almost normal grin for the briefest of moments. "Brand new formula revision. Riku-kun happened before I had a chance to use it officially."

"Officially?" Hakuba interrupted dryly. "What sort of situations are you in that would call for having such a thing?"

Kaito tilted his head, regarding the Inspector for a moment. Saguru had to suppress a reflexive twinge of foreboding at the considering gleam in Kaito's eye. The brunet let his head fall forward, bangs partially obscuring his eyes, and the sheer familiarity of that angle warned Saguru just in time before Kid's inscrutable mild smirk slipped into view. Simultaneously, Kaito's body language shifted to a showman's perfect posture to the point that Saguru could almost see the outline of the absent monocle, suit, cape and top hat. That was… less encouraging. This wasn't a heist, so for Kaito to be pulling on the showman persona of Kid...

"Let me tell you a story, Inspector." Those were Kid's tones, smooth as oiled silk. "Once upon a time, there was a legend. About a stone, hidden safely away inside a larger gem, that would only reveal itself with a red glow when brought under the light of the moon. And about how once every ten thousand years—a time soon approaching—that stone could be made to shed tears able to grant something sought after throughout history: immortality."

"Immortality," Inspector Hakuba repeated, utterly deadpan.

He was answered by Kid's wry smile. "Sounds an unlikely story, doesn't it? But some people believed it. And they wanted it so much that they were willing to do whatever it took to find it."

The Inspector's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Saguru found an irregularity in the far wall and stared at it rather than watch. Kid was being used to tell this story because Kaito as no more than himself lacked the emotional distance to do so without reopening old wounds. Not after everything that had happened today.

A smooth gesture, palm up, caught Saguru's peripheral vision, and his imagination outlined the glove that should be there. "So these people looked for a thief. They went to the greatest magician in the world and told him to steal the jewels on their behalf, so that they might find the stone they sought."

Hakuba's gaze flicked to meet Saguru's, the spark of recognition and wordless question obvious. Saguru tilted his head fractionally in confirmation; Kaito wouldn't have phrased it that way if he hadn't intended the Inspector to understand that the story was about Touichi.

"Can you guess what the magician did?"

The Inspector shook his head slowly once, eyes intent.

Again the slight, unreadable curve of Kid's smile. "The magician did precisely what they asked, but not for them. He sought to find it first, and so keep it out of their reach forever."

His hand dropped, a slight shift of posture returning his head to the angle that should have hidden his face behind monocle and shadow and white hat-brim. "The people who wanted the stone found out, and set a trap for him. One that even he could not escape, for all his magic." A brief silence. "The story does not end there, of course. He hid his legacy away in a secret place, before they sprang their trap." A casual shrug, the cape it should have rippled absent. "And then one day, the magician's son found that legacy, learned the story... and took on the role in his place."

Kaito finally met the Inspector's eyes squarely, stance relaxing from its formality, but still smiling that faint smile. "It was all a bit before your time, of course. But the magician was once known as the Kaitou Kid."

The Inspector's expression froze. How many old war stories Nakamori had told his son-in-law-to-be of the thief who'd always returned his quarry to its rightful owner, before he'd vanished into mystery?

"We didn't actually tell you how the two of us first met, did we?" Saguru eventually managed with something that could pass for equanimity.

"...No," the Inspector confirmed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But if you're a detective and he's a thief, I think I can make an educated guess."

Kaito theatrically raised his nose high in the air, crossing his arms. "You can't prove anything!"

And _that_ was a perfect specimen of Kaito's class clown act, the civilian mask that he'd only recently grown comfortable enough to drop for Saguru. ...Or possibly was too exhausted to maintain, but Saguru hoped for the former.

Choosing to follow Kaito's lead, Saguru permitted himself a mild eyeroll. "You'd be well outside his jurisdiction anyway."

"It would be hard to explain why the fingerprints of Kuroba Kaito belong to someone five years too young, as well," Hakuba allowed, the faintest amusement curving one side of his mouth.

Kaito sniffed. "As if you'd ever get the chance to make that an issue." He waggled his fingers in the direction of the hole in spacetime they'd emerged from, now long vanished.

"I'd ask if you ever stopped trying to make everyone's day more surreal," Saguru commented dryly, "but I've known you more than long enough to know the answer."

The Inspector gave them a considering look. "How long _have_ you known one another?"

"Not nearly long enough for him to have made up for that heist with the hair dye and glitter-bombs," Saguru muttered dourly. Kaito snickered.

"I... see."

Saguru took pity on the man. "Approximately fifteen months and two weeks, and we've been classmates for most of it."

"When you weren't skipping class without a care to go solve mysteries."

"Cases, thank you, and there's this remarkable concept known as _self-study_."

"So you started chasing Kid when he 'returned'," Hakuba interrupted, "but now you've decided to aid and abet in the hopes of taking down this criminal organization that is..." he grimaced unhappily but finished, "seeking immortality."

Saguru decided it wasn't worth correcting the man about the exact timeline of Kid's reappearance, and the aiding and abetting was technically true. "I decided amnesty for a single thief was fair trade for catching an entire gang of murderers."

"Mmm. ...Tell me what you know about these people."

Saguru exchanged a glance with Kaito. "That would take considerably longer than we have at the moment."

Hakuba ran a hand through his hair. "We can always come back to it. I'm already having to make up for lost time, quite literally."

Although Kaito sighed, the Inspector did have a point. "If you really want to. Where do you want to start?"

Hakuba took a moment to think. "You already mentioned that they were searching for immortality. Is that their only goal? How big a group is it? What are their resources? How long have they been active?"

Kaito took another moment to marshal his reply, but thankfully the mask of Kid made no reappearance. Perhaps because this was about the present—things Kaito was actively addressing as best he could—and not about the past. "Personally, I've only encountered the ones after that jewel, but... there's good reason to believe that there are other branches pursuing other leads. I don't have very solid or confirmed data, since I don't know how many of the details are the same here in your world. He'd know a lot more, when he wakes up, and I _might_ know of some others, I'd have to check, but for just the basics... The group is very extensive, very secretive, and they're not reluctant to employ deadly force to solve their problems. They like making 'accidents.' I have reliable reports of them using snipers, explosives, poisons, helicopters... they don't seem to have any trouble getting hold of guns, despite the ban. They've shown interest in all kinds of things: potential candidates for the legendary jewel, of course, but also work in advanced biochemistry, programming, game theory, extortion and blackmail..."

He trailed off, shaking his head, but continued, "They have a habit of using code names for their agents. The ones who've come after me personally have mostly used animals for their callsigns. But the other branch... they use types of alcohol, and they like to wear black. 'Like crows.'" Kaito gave a momentary faint grimace, as though the phrase had been drawn from an unpleasant memory. "You... probably should know about at least a few of their most dangerous members. One particularly ruthless agent, Gin, should be easy to recognize. He's tall, typically wears a black trenchcoat and fedora, and has really distinctive long, silver hair, long enough to reach his lower back. His usual partner, Vodka, is stockier, square-jawed, and always wears dark glasses with his black suit and hat. He's Gin's subordinate, but that just means he takes care of details and deals with talking to people when it's more inconvenient for Gin to kill them. If you ever encounter them, you should _always_ consider them armed and extremely dangerous."

Kaito paused and swallowed. "And you absolutely have to know about Vermouth. She... she's the reason things went differently here than they did for me." He took a deep breath. "She's a master manipulator who loves power games, and an extraordinary actress with expert-level skill in the art of disguise." His mouth twisted slightly. "As well she should, since she learned it from Kuroba Touichi."

There was a sharp intake of breath from Inspector Hakuba. Kaito smiled, too brittle for Saguru's peace of mind. "Oh yes. The trouble with dealing with Vermouth is that you never know what face—male or female, young or old—she might be wearing this time. And no one seems to quite know why, or how, but her true appearance is somehow at least twenty years too young for her age, enough for her to convincingly masquerade as her own daughter. Given who she works for, though, perhaps her continued youth isn't so entirely implausible."

"After today," Hakuba said with a humorless little smile, "the breadth of 'plausible' seems stretched to the breaking point."

Kaito's laugh was barely a puff of breath. "We'll have to be sure to save some for tomorrow. But for now... you need to know about Vermouth not only because of how dangerous she is, but also because _she's_ the one who took him, that day," he gestured at the unconscious operative, "and made him her pet project."

Inspector Hakuba's eyes narrowed in thought. "So you mean he's loyal to her?"

Saguru winced in tandem with the strangled sound Kaito made in response. "That's..." Kaito trailed off, sounding strained. "Not by choice. She's... she set herself up as his only authority, his only human _contact_ , at the start of it. And then made herself his trainer, his superior, and his lone handler, the one who gave all the orders and took all the reports." He paused, staring pensively at the futon. "He... recognizes her authority. Or did. But I don't think he ever quite stopped hating her."

Hakuba looked vaguely disquieted, but nodded. "I see." He took a breath. "Is there anything else about these people that I should know?"

Saguru darted a concerned glance at Kaito and smoothly picked up the thread. "The group has members at every level of society, from businessmen to diplomats to run-of-the-mill thugs. Their resources are... similarly extensive. These people have had dedicated laboratory research into cellular generation for nearly fifty years—" he swore foully and rounded on Kaito. " _Miyano._ We're five bloody years late for Kudou-kun to have run across her."

Kaito hunched his shoulders a little. "Not necessarily."

Saguru raised his eyebrows. "No?"

"There's a middle school girl with reddish-brown hair in Kudou's circle. She's off-limits even in the Game... he's not sure if _she_ knows about her, and doesn't want to draw attention to her either way."

Inspector Hakuba gave them a slightly sour look. "I'm afraid I left my decoder ring in my other coat."

Saguru offered an apologetic smile. "Where we're from, a young woman was raised by the organization to follow in her deceased parents' footsteps. They were biochemists; she managed to create a drug that in over ninety-nine percent of cases, killed without any trace remaining in the bloodstream. For the final fraction of a percent, it managed to trigger a chain of cellular processes such that the victim would de-age by approximately ten years."

Hakuba's hand twitched in such a way that when he finally pinched the bridge of his nose again, Saguru suspected he'd narrowly avoided covering his entire face. "Of course it does."

Kaito ignored the comment. "She'd be exactly the sort of contact we're looking for… provided we can convince Kudou to get on board."

"...Kudou Shinichi? The blind detective of Beika? What does he have to do with all of this?" Hakuba's eyes narrowed. "Why would he be an issue? What's this 'game' with him you mentioned?"

Kaito hesitated. "It's complicated."

"Enlighten me."

Kaito glanced from the Inspector to the operative and back again, hesitated, and opened his mouth to reply, only to whip his head back in the direction of the futon, Saguru automatically following his gaze.

The unconscious man's brows were furrowed, expression now a faint grimace. He shifted slightly with a soft, distressed sound they might have missed if the room hadn't gone completely silent.

Saguru found himself and moving in tandem with Kaito to flank Inspector Hakuba. The three of them stood, tense and watchful, between the futon and the open doorway. Saguru's hand went to the reassuring weight of the collapsed staff in his pocket. After an instant's internal debate he pulled it out and expanded it, holding it ready for what small comfort having it on hand could provide, and waited.

The man soon stirred, blinking open dazed eyes still tight with the distress that had prompted Kaito to sedate him in the first place. It took only a moment or two for something to attract his attention in their direction. As soon as he turned his head and saw Inspector Hakuba, he froze so completely it was impossible to tell if he was still breathing, eyes going wide in disbelief and a startlingly vulnerable blend of emotions.

"...Hakuba-san?" he asked, sitting up as though he wasn't quite aware he was doing it, voice small and almost desperately pleading in a way that seemed better suited to someone far younger. Someone without his capacity to be a deadly threat.

Inspector Hakuba shifted slightly in justified wariness, but eventually gave a careful nod.

The operative stared at him, eyes still frozen wide, thoughts and feelings flickering across his expression too quickly to read. He took a desperate sort of breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and faster than any of them could react practically lunged across the intervening distance, both hands closing on Inspector Hakuba's coat before the Inspector could properly evade.

When Hakuba flinched but failed to vanish into thin air, the operative crumpled to his knees, trembling, his grip still so unrelenting that Hakuba had to drop to one knee to avoid being pulled down to the floor. " _Sorry_ ," Kaito's black-clothed counterpart almost choked out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—shouldn't have—" he trailed off with a shudder, ducking his head. " _I'm sorry_."

Saguru swallowed against an uncomfortable degree of _deja vu_ at the sight. Superficial similarities aside, this was not actually the same situation as that nerve-wracking visit in the small hours of the morning after Jack Connery's death that had launched Saguru into this insanity in the first place.

The Inspector stared down at the shivering operative attached to his coat with a completely reasonable degree of controlled alarm. At least for someone who'd been practically tackled by a criminal last seen murdering his doppelganger. They were lucky Hakuba had managed to restrain himself; judging by the twitches, the Inspector had barely refrained from reflexively redirecting the operative's momentum and throwing him across the room.

It was disconcerting, the sheer contrast between the armed and deadly Organization thief they'd seen on the monitor screens and this haunted, defeated echo. He clung to the Inspector's coat as though it was the only thing holding him up, shoulders hunched defensively and still muttering a broken litany. "I'm sorry—didn't get it, didn't _understand_ —should've...wish I'd—should've never—I'm _sorry_."

For all that both wore the same black costume, they were practically two different men, and Saguru wondered again what the operative must have been through—what the unrelenting dreams must have been like—to change him so drastically.

He couldn't entirely tell what Inspector Hakuba made of it; his counterpart was still staring at the thief, expression settled into wearily resigned patience. The Inspector shook his head slightly, then carefully slipped a hand into an upper inside pocket of his coat without disturbing the other man's grip on the fabric. He withdrew his gun and offered it back to Saguru in a smooth, discreet motion, meeting Saguru's startled glance with a deadpan raised brow.

"Given how easily yours makes off with handcuffs, I don't want to risk _this_ one getting his hands on it," he murmured, voice low and even.

Saguru accepted the firearm with alacrity and carefully stowed it away, confirming with a quick glance that the operative still didn't seem to be paying attention to anything but his need to apologize. "A reasonable concern."

"I thought as much." Hakuba looked back to—well, Saguru could actually think of him as Kuroba, at this point—and seemed to weigh his options carefully. "...If I accept your apology, will you stop repeating yourself?"

Kuroba's breath hitched mid-apology and his head jerked up to meet Hakuba's mildly exasperated gaze. He tried to speak, but only seemed capable of managing a vaguely bewildered, interrogative noise.

"I won't say I forgive you," Hakuba continued. "Not at this point. I'm not even going to pretend to be anything but still unhappy about the matter. But I do believe that you mean it, now, when you say you're sorry and wish you had understood then."

Kuroba let out a pained little noise of assent, a desperate nod nearly burying his forehead back in the Inspector's coat.

Hakuba waited for a moment, looking down at him. "...Is there any chance you will agree to let go of me now?"

His only response was a small near-whimper. If anything, Kuroba's grip on the coat tightened. Hakuba pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Alright, then. Come on."

Saguru watched in faint amusement as the Inspector steered Kuroba back toward the futon. It was mostly by the strategy of moving that way himself, slowly but inexorably, which left Kuroba with the choice of either accompanying him or letting go. A few minutes of prodding later, they were both seated on the futon, Hakuba with his back securely against the wall and Kuroba half-curled next to him, head bent and face mostly hidden in the sleeve of the Inspector's coat.

Saguru watched them with cautiously hopeful concern. Having Kaito's nightmare-world counterpart stuck on 'desperate apology' was still far better than any of what they'd seen from the man when they first arrived. Oh, Kuroba undoubtedly assumed that the Inspector's presence was simply another dream, especially after having just met Kaito and Saguru, but he was at least completely focused on what was in front of him.

It hadn't been clear before, but after seeing the night of the heist, and now watching Kuroba's reaction to the Inspector... when Saguru and Kaito had first arrived in this world, even when he'd ostensibly talked to them, the operative had still only really been paying attention to whatever was going on inside his own head. True, the man _had_ assumed they were figments of his imagination, but beyond the surface veneer of coherence he'd acted like he was carrying on a conversation with himself—and an unsettlingly fragmented one, at that. At least right now, the manic guilt that had alarmed them so badly had an external target, one that Kuroba still cared about enough for it to ground him for the moment.

Inspector Hakuba was apparently somewhat less than delighted at _being_ that target. He shot both Kaito and Saguru a look of silent exasperation before turning his head to address the thief almost plastered to his arm. More gently than Saguru would have expected, he asked, "So you really didn't understand, that night?"

Kuroba shuddered with another of those breaths that was half-laugh, half-sob. "Thought I did. Of course I _thought_ I did—" and _that_ breath was definitely a despairing, hysterical laugh, "and how did I not know how wrong that was? How do you forget what it _means_ to kill someone? To let it become just part of the job, just how you get people out of the way—and your reason for avoiding it is just to avoid loose ends, the resources to clean it up and the notation on your _performance review_ —" he broke off, venomous frustration and frantic guilt giving way to shuddering, too-fast gasps for air.

The was a faint hitch of breath from beside Saguru, as well. He took one look at the way Kaito's expression appeared like he'd been punched in the gut, pulled him over to a wall of their own, and made him sit with his head down. He settled beside Kaito, dropping his staff on the nearest patch of floor, and hissed in Kaito's ear, " _Breathe_."

By the time Saguru was satisfied with his classm—his _friend's_ precarious stability, the Kuroba across the room was already going on, sounding lost. "How'd she do it? When did I start _listening_? Actually _believing_ the way she—no, all of them made it seem like it was just... how things were. That it was _obviously_ weak and ridiculous to care about things like that, for them to matter, that—how do you forget how to _care_?"

Saguru couldn't stop himself from wincing at the depth of bewildered pain in Kuroba's voice. The whole exchange was uncomfortably reminiscent of that other Kudou after they'd pried him free of Vermouth's grip, only worse. Kaito's reaction made far too much sense.

"How... how do you forget that you're dealing with other _people?_ " Kuroba broke off with a small, choked sound. "...I'm sorry. I know, I know, you said I shouldn't—you know I am, already, but—you, you were the first one to use my _name_ since—since they... How did I not realize? You were trying to remind me of all of that, of... of everything I was supposed to know, so why didn't I _understand_ , before it was too late?"

Saguru took a deep, deliberate breath. While this was still less alarming than the terrifyingly unstable fatalism they'd witnessed before Kaito had sedated him, the sheer unabating anguish hurt to listento.

"Because someone invested a great deal of time, effort, and knowledge of exactly what they were doing in order to ensure that you wouldn't," Inspector Hakuba replied, managing to sound at once grim and almost gentle. "You wouldn't do things the same way now if you had them to do over, would you?"

The single harsh laugh he provoked out of Kuroba sounded so raw that it had to have hurt his throat, no matter how skilled at controlling his voice he was supposed to be. "The _same_? There's— _why_ did they even—there was no reason, there was _never_ any reason to! There's _no reason_ that those assignments couldn't have been accomplished without—no one should have had to _die_! I never even thought to just... wait, to avoid them, just let it take more time, or—why was there never the equipment, something so simple as a tranquilizer, or, or even a taser—nothing was ever mentioned, I was never _trained_ to—I _had_ the skills! I could have done it the longer way, just a little more time and effort, just from me, alone, only _me_ , and no one would ever have had to... but none of them ever had any interest in that, did they?" His voice went abruptly bitter.

"It's what they wanted, isn't it? My work wouldn't have been an effective _threat_ without actual casualties." He laughed again, harsh and pained. "They didn't want me to be nonlethal. Just _efficient_ ," he nearly spat the word, frustration half-threatening to choke him. "And I... I did it, learned what she wanted me to, why did I ever _listen_ to her, until it never even occurred to me to think to do it otherwise—until I thought that their methods made _sense_ , how could I ever have..."

He trailed off with another small, wounded sound, burying his face against the Inspector's sleeve and curling in on himself even farther. Voice so small that the plaintive question was almost too muffled to hear, he asked, "How did they manage to teach me to be _cruel_?"

Inspector Hakuba's eyes met Saguru's from across the room. Saguru didn't know what the man expected from him and so ignored him in favor of Kaito, who was curled into his own distressed huddle, hands clasped tightly over the back of his neck. Saguru didn't quite dare try to attempt to help verbally, not when he didn't want to remind Kuroba of their presence. He took a moment to be devoutly thankful for the bronze of his glasses and gloves; without them, the events of the past hour or so would probably have rendered him catatonic, practice or no practice. Shifting to better drape an arm over Kaito's shoulders, he hoped the tight grip would convey the support he was trying to offer.

"So you don't want to hurt anyone anymore." The Inspector's voice was slow and calm, and Saguru spared the man an incredulous glance, because wasn't that much _obvious_ by this point? Surely it couldn't be worth provoking more of the harsh, choked laughter that followed the question.

"Of _course_ I don't! Now that it's far, far too late for it to do any good!" Kuroba's despondent laughter was starting to sound as broken as it had before Saguru and Kaito's unplanned jaunt through time. If he hadn't had his own Kaito to look after, Saguru would have gone over to intervene. They'd been trying to find a way to _stabilize_ him, not shatter him further!

"I can't make up for it, you know. All of it. Any of it." Kuroba's tone had suddenly gone level, almost conversational. Saguru might have taken that as a good sign if it hadn't had a disturbing resemblance to the similar shift when he'd earlier asked Saguru whether he should let Saguru _watch him die_. Kuroba continued, "Not just you, though of course you'd understand what I mean—how many lives did I destroy, how many families? How much irreparable damage did I do that I can't even remember because I didn't even register them individually at the time? At least with you I have the chance to apologize, even if it is just in a dream."

Kuroba sounded only distantly sad, now, the similarity to how he'd sounded right before he'd stared down the barrel of a live, loaded gun raising all the hairs on the back of Saguru's neck. He rechecked the outlines of both guns beneath his coat for reassurance that they were far, far out of Kuroba's reach, intensely grateful that Inspector Hakuba had had the sense to re-surrender his sidearm.

Staring hard at Hakuba, Saguru willed him to pick up on the urgent dismay in his expression and realize that he was in dangerous territory. Kuroba went on, now limp against the wall and the Inspector's arm, "I can't even do anything about the ones I _do_ remember. Can't fix it. Not just you; even the ones who're still... Inspector Nakamori. Kudou Shinichi." Saguru couldn't see much of Kuroba's face, but his expression echoed the unfeigned note of grief in his voice.

Inspector Hakuba's eyes had hardened at the reminder of Nakamori's crippling injury, but now he blinked. "Kudou-kun? What did you do to—" he cut off, eyes going wide in sudden appalled realization. "You mean, the one who blinded—that was—?"

Saguru saw Kuroba actually _flinch_. "Yes," he admitted, tone gone complicated and pained again. "He wouldn't have publicized it, not after what I started..."

Kuroba's face contorted and he drew himself up again. "It shouldn't have been like that. It shouldn't have gone that way, not for him. Not for any of them!" His fist thudded deep into the futon. "What kind of plans ask for things like that? _Encourage_ them, even when they don't say so outright?" He shook his head, staring down at nothing. "Why did I let them? Why didn't I ever see?"

He paused for breath, then gave a short, mirthless laugh. "If I did things over, you said? But that's the problem, isn't it? The wrong question. If I _knew_ what—what I always should have, I wouldn't do it over, I'd do it _right_." He grinned at nothing, sharp and pained and humorless. "Wouldn't _stay_. Wouldn't let them keep me in the first place, no matter what they thought. Wouldn't _ever_ let them trick me into thinking the way down was the way out, not when it was really just them using me for their dirty work. Wouldn't _help_ them, wouldn't _ever_ , not when they took me because I'm _supposed_ to have been like Da—"

Kuroba fell abruptly silent, face suddenly losing all of what little color it'd had. "No," he breathed, little more than a whimper. " _No_ ," he repeated, now a desperate, stricken whisper.

There was a single full second of perfectly still silence.

Then Kuroba crumpled utterly, hyperventilating in great, ragged gasps. "Dad... Dad, I didn't—it wasn't—I forgot that _they_ were the—I didn't mean—I'm sorry, Dad, I'm _sorry_ , I—!" The frantic babble of apology dissolved into terrible, wordless, agonized keening.

Saguru cringed, holding onto Kaito as tightly as he could even as Kaito huddled further inward in response to the note of utter despair in Kuroba's sudden epiphany. Inspector Hakuba tried to get through to him again, but Kuroba didn't appear to register any of it, not even the Inspector calling his name with increasing alarm. After several fruitless attempts Hakuba gave Saguru an utterly helpless look. Saguru shot him a look of tight-lipped impatience and made a sharp, exasperated gesture for him to hurry up and _do_ something.

The Inspector stared back down at the thief having a breakdown practically _on_ him, clearly at a loss for what he could safely assume would actually _help_. Eventually Hakuba shook his head, set his jaw, and set about very, very carefully extricating himself from the heavy material of his coat without overly disturbing the relevant sleeve. Once that was accomplished, he briskly but carefully emptied several pockets before glancing at Kuroba again and apparently deciding to leave the rest. Slowly, with a great deal of caution and creativity, he succeeded in leaving the sleeve already in contact with Kuroba in place as he gingerly wrapped the rest of the coat around him.

Kuroba's keening had already mostly given way to rough, anguished hyperventilation, but there was a small sound like a whimper as the fabric fell over him. He curled in on himself, almost burrowing into it, and Hakuba resettled carefully against the wall beside him with a watchful eye.

The sobs started quietly.

Both Saguru and Hakuba tensed as they increased in volume and strength until the coat-shrouded form was visibly shuddering, but the wild hysteria of before didn't return. There was only the steady sound of helpless, heartbroken weeping.

Saguru kept his arm over Kaito's shoulders as reassuringly secure as he could make it. Had Kuroba ever gotten the chance to properly grieve that first catastrophic loss, back then? Given everything Saguru'd managed to piece together from observation and Kaito's sparse descriptions, likely not. Not when it would have meant exposing weakness that Vermouth would take ruthless advantage of.

Inspector Hakuba didn't speak again until everything eventually faded back to quiet, the figure slumped beside him finally relaxing into the complete limpness of unconsciousness.

Voice shaking very slightly, Hakuba stated, "I think we may need to discuss the precise meaning of ' _not well'_."

Saguru instinctively glanced at Kaito, only to realize that the inanimate weight against his side had come from Kaito falling into exhausted sleep against him. He sighed. It was going to be a long day.


	14. Long, Hard Road (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder: first names outside of dialogue refer to the protagonists, while surnames outside of dialogue refer to Kaito and Saguru's counterparts. Thanks to RandomImagination and Snickerer for betaing.

_...the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing_  
 _..._  
 _Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:_  
 _So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing._  
 _Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.  
_ ~East Coker (III.22, 27-29)

* * *

_Why is there a kink in my neck?_

Kaito blinked, reorienting, before it flooded back: the portals, the theft, the Other Guys, and the soundtrack of distressed realization to which he'd lost consciousness.

"Kuroba-kun?" Saguru's voice simultaneously came from above him and hummed through his skull. After a moment, Kaito realized this was because his head and shoulders were half-tucked against Saguru's ribs, which also neatly explained the neck kink.

While he would trust Saguru at his back without a qualm, the detective made a terrible pillow. Kaito shifted to establish some personal space and checked that Saguru had his glasses and looked reasonably composed. Both, thankfully, were the case. "Sorry about that."

Saguru gave him a faint smile. "Somehow, I think I'll survive. Are _you_ all right? It's been several hours."

"Yeah, I think so. I just pushed myself doing so much at once. I'm better now..." He did feel rested, far better than he could remember managing lately without the tea— _Waitaminute._ His eyes widened in sudden overwhelming realization. "I didn't _dream._ Not once."

Saguru at least had the sense to not ask if he was sure, though he appeared equally surprised. "Something's different, then."

Kaito nodded, glancing at the still, coat-shrouded shape beside the Inspector. Hakuba seemed to pick up on at least part of the question in his eyes, because he shook his head. "Hasn't moved an inch in the past five hours and twelve minutes. If I couldn't still see him breathing, I might have started to worry."

"Oh. I... don't think he's had much actual sleep for a while now."

Hakuba smiled in wry amusement. "So Saguru-san mentioned, earlier."

"Heh. I guess you guys did have plenty of time to talk," Kaito admitted, massaging the back of his neck. "I don't know, after the day we've had... the lack of nightmares could be from anything at this point. Maybe we should just see if it happens again." As little as he might look forward to the prospect of their return.

Saguru nodded. "Unless you're still feeling tired, it can wait. Inspector Hakuba's internal clock is past midnight, and now that there's three of us awake we can outnumber Kuroba-san in shifts."

Kaito tried to not feel jarred at Saguru's use of his name to refer to his counterpart. Even after recent events it was still hard to think of him like that. Carefully ignoring it, he scrubbed a hand across his eyes and stood. "Sounds good. Though I don't know about you two, but I could use some food first. Have you both been on guard here the whole time?"

"We did eat the last of what we packed with us," Saguru admitted, "but it didn't seem the best plan to leave only one of us here."

Kaito considered the situation and nodded. "Alright. I'll go see what there is out there that's actually edible."

The answer, it turned out, was 'not much.' The astonished noise he made after opening the clearly-long-neglected fridge prompted Saguru to call from the bedroom, voice carefully neutral, "Everything all right out there?"

"Fine," Kaito called back, still staring at the barren fridge interior. "Just—what has that guy been _eating_ for the past few weeks?"

"You honestly think he's had much of an appetite?" Saguru asked. "Is there anything anywhere?"

Kaito checked what few cabinets there were. "Assuming you mean actual _food_ —unless you count tofu you couldn't pay me to touch without bleach, half a bag of rice, and an open package of what's probably stale crackers, all he's got is half a dozen cans of juice and a few bottles of water." On a hunch, he took a quick look in the trash; there wasn't very much, mostly empty packaging from more crackers and biscuits, some cans, and what looked like cup ramen further down.

Saguru sighed. "I suppose you'd better go on a shopping trip, then, and we'll save the juice for when he wakes up."

Kaito heard Hakuba ask, "Is it safe for him to go out looking like that?"

Saguru's dryly amused answer was definitely pitched to carry. "Almost certainly not, but I doubt that he plans to."

Kaito grinned as he re-entered the bedroom. "I didn't, no." He rummaged up the miniature disguise kit he'd restocked thanks to supplies from the future-Kuroba of the prior world. Gel-flattened hair, thickened eyebrows, and slightly padded cheekbones later, he turned back around and grinned even wider at Inspector Hakuba's expression.

"You should see it when he's actually trying," Saguru commented with fond exasperation.

Kaito half-bowed acknowledgment. "I aim to please."

Saguru let out what was for him a spectacularly expressive snort. Kaito beamed and headed for the door, disregarding the Inspector's raised eyebrow at them both.

* * *

Luckily for Kaito's wallet, over their week in the previous reality every single couple had slipped him some cash under the excuse of an "early birthday present." While mildly discomfiting, knowing that Saguru's wallet had already been emptied and Kaito himself was running low had led him to not refuse it any longer than was polite. As a result, he could actually afford lunch boxes with plenty of funds left over.

A reassuringly incident-free shopping trip later, Kaito divvied up the food between the three of them and turned to Saguru. "So, what exactly did you cover while I was out?"

Saguru took the time to wolf several bites and put his thoughts in order. "Quite a lot. As much as I could recall of exactly what happened when we first arrived, for one." He nodded in the direction of Kaito's unconscious older counterpart. "Beyond that... what little else I could contribute about what we've learned of his life from the dreams. A bit more about our timeline, at least from my perspective, and some of the stories of our counterparts in the other timelines we've passed through. And of course a bit about our extras," he tapped the sunglasses pushed up on his head, "so that if events do become... more interesting than we might prefer, it won't come as a total surprise if, say, I have an unfortunate reaction to something, or you need to sic a dragon on someone."

"Sounds like quite a thorough briefing," Kaito managed to respond through the rather unique mental sensation of a dragon choking in indignant amusement.

"It seemed sensible," Saguru demurred. A moment later, he added, "Also, it gave us something to do besides counting the seconds."

Kaito gave Saguru a considering look. "You actually _do_ that, don't you."

"Only at the outermost reaches of utter boredom, when even logic puzzles have been exhausted," Hakuba said.

"Also, it tends more toward mental arithmetic than simple counting—"

"Stop!" Kaito clapped his hands over his ears. "Spare me! I'm sorry I asked!"

Both of them chuckled at him in slightly disconcerting harmony before Saguru continued, "We were also comparing our own personal histories before you woke up and while you were gone." He nodded at Hakuba. "Apparently, when he was young, he idolized Lestrade rather than Holmes."

"And while I'm sure it enlivened matters, I think I may be grateful that my own high school experience did not involve nearly as many confetti smoke-bombs," the Inspector added in a mild tone.

"You don't know what you were missing," Kaito started with an automatic grin, which fell flat as his brain caught up with his mouth. He swore under his breath.

Hakuba favored him with a grim smile. "I've been well informed."

"And there are more important things to consider at the moment than what might have been," Saguru said, deftly redirecting the conversation. "For one, how likely is Vermouth to come looking, given that Kuroba-san seems to have been neglecting basic self-care, let alone outside communications?"

Kaito glanced over at the futon. "It's... hard to say. It's _really_ hard to say. Everything about him that I know for certain is from, well, before the evening we nabbed the Inspector from." He nodded at Hakuba. "I can surmise what happened after that from what this place looks like and how he was reacting earlier, but... really, nothing like this has happened before. I'll probably just have to ask him about it after he wakes up. He did seem to be considering the possibility of uninvited Syndicate visitors earlier, but given how he was debatably lucid at the time, I can't tell how much stock we should put in _that_ either."

Frowning in thought, Kaito absently folded an empty wrapper through a series of geometrical shapes. "Given how high-profile your disappearance would have been, it would have been reasonable for him to be ordered to stay low for a while. But for how long, I don't know. I somehow doubt he's been paying attention to any messages or orders he _has_ been sent, if there even were any; certainly not for the last few days."

"...So there could be a retrieval team headed here at this moment."

"...Yeah," Kaito sighed, flopping back against the wall. "And to make things even better, Vermouth _loves_ to confound expectations, so that it's never completely certain which way she'll really jump. I should—"

"Kuroba-kun," Saguru interrupted, paling, "I didn't think, not until just now, but—would she be the sort to bug a supposed haven of independence?"

Kaito's blood ran cold at a sudden flash of dream-memory, a well-worn deja vu: any dawning hope and triumph at successful escape always being ended by the sudden appearance of _that smile_. They hadn't thought, hadn't _checked_ ; what if she was listening and laughing and noting down every detail, every implication they hadn't thought to guard against revealing? What if she'd only been waiting until they finally got smart enough to realize and now she would be on the move—

:I suppose,: Lupin's genteel purr interrupted Kaito's thoughts before he could work into full panic, :that now would be an appropriate time to mention that there is no need for concern about such a possibility.:

Kaito froze. _You're sure? You're absolutely positive she hasn't been listening?_

:You doubt me?: Lupin somehow managed a perfect balance between gracious understanding and mild offense.

_No, I... Thanks._ The dream-memory smile of hers flashed again. _Does she have other ways to track him?_ He couldn't recall any, but the scraps of shared memories he retained had more holes in them than a task force perimeter.

There was a moment's silence. :Nothing that would not be best explained by his own words.:

Kaito decided it wasn't worth pressing why Lupin didn't want to explain what was clearly some form of yes, and tried to get himself to breathe evenly again instead. "No bugs. Lupin-san's sure of it, even if she _is_ the type."

Saguru breathed an audible sigh of relief, while the Inspector looked thoughtful. "Lupin-san is one of the interdimensional beings like the dragon Hakuba-kun mentioned earlier, I take it?"

The description was close enough. "Got it in one. But even if she hasn't been listening in on us, there's still no guarantee that she or a team might not be on their way over anyway, just because of him. They're not the sort of people to let a significant asset get away with going AWOL for very long. I should be able to get at least the three of us out of here if there's an emergency before he wakes up, but I really hope I don't have to. Where would we _go_? And I don't want to leave him behind, but _not_ leaving him would look more suspicious. Not to mention that I don't think he'd react well to being moved without being asked, let alone being informed only after the fact."

Saguru sighed. "If it becomes necessary, we'll deal with the fallout as it comes. However, regardless of suspicion, if we do make an abrupt exit we should at least try to take his electronics with us." So saying, Saguru retrieved the laptop, phone, and carrying case that had been left haphazardly on the couch in the other room. "I'll cover item transport, Inspector Hakuba will carry Kuroba-san, and you can concentrate on getting us out."

"Right." Kaito eyed the laptop warily. "Of course, she'll have done hell-knows-what to both of those. I want to make sure there's no physical trackers even if we don't turn the things on right now." He paused for a moment, hand hovering above the case. "Though we are operating blind at the moment. Unless someone walks in on us, we won't know anything about what they're planning or what instructions she might have tried to send him if we don't take the risk and boot them up anyway."

Hakuba looked dubious. "Her remote surveillance capabilities aside, given that we don't know what his state of mind will be when he awakes, are you certain that's a wise idea?"

Kaito tried to picture how his still-unconscious counterpart might react to finding they'd been going through his digital things without supervision and came up with half a dozen wildly different scenarios. "Positive? No. But if I'm careful I should be able to leave no traces on this end, and he's been so sleep-deprived that if he stays nightmare-free too now, I doubt he's going to wake up anytime soon."

Hakuba didn't look any happier, but he nodded. "Keylogger or GPS tracker would be easiest, though it would have to be something well-hidden if he checks for those sorts of things."

"I would certainly expect so," Saguru replied, displaying the phone to show a small piece of opaque tape covering the camera. "He's already got any and all camera lenses covered on both of them, so that's remote video monitoring taken care of, at least."

"That's a start, then," Kaito said. Jii had taught him an insane number of computer security system workarounds not long after he started as Kid, 'just in case'. It wasn't a guarantee, especially given that this was technically the future and Kaito'd never seen a laptop that _small_ before, but it was better than nothing. "You check the phone, I'll check the laptop."

Saguru passed the laptop over. "Have you any idea what the phone's password might be?"

Kaito gave him a blank look, before a memory from one of the dreams stirred. "...Four sixes. It's "black" backwards, and _kuro_ is... what she did to his name."

Inspector Hakuba narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

Kaito looked away, letting his eyes settle on the sleeper. "It's not the clearest, but... I'm pretty sure Kuro is all he was ever called, when she finally gave him a name at all. Well... 'Crow', really, she always wrote it in katakana with the elongated vowel, and any other agents he came in contact with followed suit. He... he knew he used to be Kuroba Kaito? But more the same way a person kept in the dark for twenty years might know there's such a thing as the sun." His mouth flattened into a thin line, bits of dream-memory knowledge falling unpleasantly into place with his own understanding. "I don't know if he's even realized, but I think... it feels like she did it so that if he ever encountered it, it would only ever mean _her_ name to him, anymore." The one she'd given him, not the one that had been his. It made a twisted sort of sense, that Vermouth could— _would_ —find a way to steal even his own name from him.

"I see." Hakuba expression turned pensive.

Saguru interrupted the serious mood with a faint noise of satisfaction. "It was right; I'm in. "

"Good. Inform me if you find anything. I," Hakuba said with a slight grunt, easing his way into a standing position, "am going to pace the other room until I regain full feeling in my legs, and then I'm getting some _sleep._ "

He gingerly limped out of the room without waiting for an answer.

Kaito exchanged a glance with Saguru, shrugged, and very, very carefully got down to work.

* * *

Several hours and emptied drink cans later, there had been no interruptions by outside visitors or by either of their older counterparts so much as stirring from unconsciousness. Inspector Hakuba had been logical enough to stretch out on the bedroom futon rather than risk being caught unawares on the couch in the front room. As for Kaito's counterpart, Kaito had decided to think of him as Kurou. Leaving him nameless or using the codename Vermouth had chosen rankled; shifting the syllable association to the name-kanji for 'long time' and 'skilled' felt appropriate—and if she could try to steal the word then he had every right to steal it _back_. Kurou had wedged his back against the wall in such a way that he took up very little space on the luxuriantly wide futon. The silence was broken only by Hakuba snoring every once in awhile.

Kaito sighed and closed the laptop. "This one's clean, unless the tech involved has gotten a _lot_ more subtle. And it looks like he's supposed to make a meeting this weekend, but he hasn't actually _missed_ anything. Well, nothing important, or that they would expect something from him for."

Saguru nodded. "There's nothing here, either, except an old voicemail from someone I don't recognize inviting him out for a drink, and a very cryptic text that I assume is from Vermouth, going by the archive of similar texts. From what I could decipher, I believe it advises him to lay low for a while, but I'd require several _more_ hours and some decryption software to feel absolutely certain." He slid the phone into the computer case's pocket. "There's also a few chess puzzle apps that appear to be nearly all beaten, but those seemed of secondary importance."

"Heh. Probably." Kaito massaged his eyes. "Of course, compared to what we actually showed up to do, all of this is one big sidetrack." Their goal in coming to this world at all had been derailed by the urgency of dealing with his counterpart's situation and the repercussions of the resulting temporal misadventure.

"A not unworthy one, however," Saguru offered.

"Well, sure... but we originally came here for information, and we're practically in the negative. We're worried about a surprise visit from Vermouth, but what if whatever—whoever—started this whole Shadow mess knows we're here and is planning a welcome we'd rather avoid?" Kaito looked back at the sleepers. "I can't just leave them like this, but what if we're missing something important?"

Saguru paused for a moment. "Then we'll deal with it when we find it."

"Mmm." Kaito closed his eyes, seeking the familiar presences at the edge of awarenessof _green crystal-shine_ and _moon-shadow in smoke._

_Am I being paranoid? Can you sense anything more specific about the origin of that Shadow-thread now that we're a whole lot closer?_

_:Well—that is—:_ Meraud began, before Lupin interrupted smoothly.

_:There is no present threat from that quarter. Best finish the task at hand before seeking other paths.:_

Kaito waited a bit to see if anything else was forthcoming. _No_ present _threat? So either it doesn't know we're here, or doesn't care? Would it be able to sense us through that Dark thread?_

: _There is no danger of that_.:

It would be nice if Lupin was corporeal so Kaito could favor the being with a _proper_ dubiously skeptical look. _What aren't you telling me?_

_:Nothing you need concern yourself with now.:_

Before Kaito could growl, physically or mentally, for Lupin to give better answers, a tight grip on his shoulder brought him back to the real world. Saguru urgently tipped his head toward the futon, and Kaito looked to see Kurou stirring from his huddle under Hakuba's coat.

The process felt slower than it probably was, the way the man uncurled slightly from the wall and raised his head with a few sleepy blinks, coat sliding back to only half-cover his hair. Inspector Hakuba's eyes flew open when the futon shifted and he immediately sat up with a guarded expression, though he made no attempt to get out of range. Kurou's gaze snapped to follow the movement, and when recognition hit he froze in the act of levering himself upright, eyes wide and something almost desperately sad flickering in their depths.

After a long moment, a harsh croak escaped from Kurou's lips. "You're still here."

Hakuba's expression was as utterly neutral as his voice. "Yes."

"...Hah." It was more a breath or an acknowledgement than a laugh, but it seemed enough to let Kurou collect himself, because he pushed himself the rest of the way to sitting. He opened his mouth, but then the slide of the coat around his shoulders distracted him. There was a breathless silence as he quickly pulled the material back around him like a blanket. Or a shield. Pale fingers gripping the dark cloth so tightly they went bloodless, his lips pulled into a faint, resigned smile. "So this is how the dreams are going to go now, huh?"

The Inspector raised a perfectly deadpan eyebrow. "You think you're still dreaming?"

"Or hallucinating. There's no place left for you but in my head." The smile faded into deeper resignation. "I don't usually get consistency like this, but waking to the real world has felt more nightmareish. I wonder if that's the point? Make me prefer it like this, so I don't bother waking up at all?"

He sounded far too unconcerned by the prospect, but before Kaito could interject, Hakuba answered, "While a tenable theory, it is, at least this time, untrue. You're awake, Kuroba-san, and I'm sitting here before you due to several circumstances that _should_ be outright impossible but exist anyway." He glanced over his shoulder at Kaito and Saguru and Kurou followed his gaze, eyes widening.

"You—you can see them? But they're not—and I saw, I _watched you—"_ He broke off as his already hoarse voice wavered, and somehow managed to shrink further inside the coat.

Kaito grabbed the spare can of juice he'd never bothered opening, and slipped out from Saguru's grip to approach the futon. "We're not actually hallucinations, either. I just happen to be the Kuroba Kaito whose life you've been dreaming." He held out the juice can as a peace offering. "I don't know what all you saw, but I hope it was enough to realize that I can't let Vermouth and those bastards win in _any_ reality."

Kurou swallowed convulsively at Vermouth's name, but otherwise seemed too stunned to do anything but stare in bewilderment. Kaito set the drink against Kurou's fingers, waiting until Kurou's hand moved on its own to grip it before letting go. "Drink that. You must be dehydrated, after last night."

Kurou looked from Kaito, to the drink, to all of them again, and back to the drink. His free hand reached out from the coat and, with infinite gentleness, poked at Hakuba's arm. When it stayed solid and warm, his eyes caught Hakuba's again with a kind of desperate hunger. " _How_ can you be real?"

In a surprisingly patient tone, Hakuba said, "Drink the juice." Kurou glanced at the juice as if he'd never seen it before, then opened it and took a few small sips with his attention riveted to Hakuba's face. Hakuba continued, "You're already aware of the internal consistency between sleeping last night and waking now. As for that night, what you thought was _me_ was in truth a clever substitute." Hakuba's tone made it clear that he hadn't forgotten the security guard, but was waiting to bring it up. Kurou flinched slightly, but said nothing.

"At this point," Kaito offered before Kurou could wilt beneath the coat, "you have two choices. Believe that this is a dream, and let her win by having taken everything that matters, or believe that we're real and there's a way out of the abyss. A _real_ way out, that starts with atoning for the people you were made to hurt."

Kurou clutched at his drink, cynicism and hope warring together in his expression, until he seemed to reach a decision and took a deep breath. "...When does Aoko visit my grave?"

Hakuba's eyes narrowed, lips thinning briefly into a tight line. "On your supposed deathday, we go together; on your birthday, she goes alone. On both occasions, she insists on leaving chocolate instead of flowers, and asks you to share them with her mother."

After a moment's scrutiny, Kurou inclined his head a fraction. "I never got close enough to hear what she says."

"Then you accept, at least provisionally, that you're properly awake?" Hakuba asked.

Kurou nodded slowly, then murmured, "I'm sorry. I can never say it enough, but..."

"A litany is unnecessary."

After a moment, Kurou admitted, "I don't know if I can stop."

"Mmm." Hakuba leaned forward, close enough to fill most of Kurou's vision. "This is what will happen: first you will help me catch Vermouth, and then you will help me break your— _this_ organization like an egg. Based upon the outcome of those two ventures, I will present your case to my father and he will determine whether your efforts are sufficient redress or whether you will still stand trial with your previous handlers. If at any point you attempt to break my custody, I _will_ catch you. And you will deeply regret it."

Kurou's lips quirked with more heartbreak than humor. "It will never be enough. But it would be a start, if I could go with you."

Hakuba raised both eyebrows, this time. "Why would that be an issue?"

Kurou took a large gulp of juice, stalling, then finally replied, "Because there's a tracker between my shoulder blades."

Kaito's oath echoed with the others', fingernails digging into his palms. _That rather neatly explains why he never tried running as an adult._ "Outside of assignments, you had a radius limit, didn't you."

Another nod, hair falling over his face. "The only discreet clinic nearby is one of our—" he stopped, and retried with careful deliberation, "is one of theirs."

Before silence could stretch, Saguru inquired thoughtfully, "If you left the radius, would she come after you herself, or send someone?"

Kurou shivered, pulling the coat tighter around his shoulders with one hand. "I've never tried. But... it's always been her for anything else. Just her."

"Then if we can choose where to go to deal with that, we can ambush her."

Kurou looked at the floor. "And do what with them? You can't hold her for long, and if you—" he glanced up at Hakuba, "out yourself as alive, you won't last a week."

Hakuba bristled, but Kaito jumped in first with, "Kudou will be interested. Or there might still be American law enforcement in the country who could take care of her quietly, and help with going after the rest."

Kurou flinched slightly at Kudou's name, but then appeared distracted from his guilt by the rest of Kaito's comment. "The Americans? They turn up at the fringes occasionally, but the grapevine said they'd had a few failed ops and left…"

Kaito shrugged. "We have a few names to check that might still be around. But now that you're awake and semi-coherent, we need to focus on getting out. One, do you have any clothes that would fit Inspector Hakuba, and two," Kaito wrinkled his nose, "when was the last time you had a shower?"

Kurou assessed Hakuba from head to toe in a swift, practiced glance. "The less you look like yourself, the better, so second drawer in the right side of the closet has shorts and jeans and at least one t-shirt that should fit your shoulder width. And the baseball cap on the top shelf has an adjustment strap, since your head is a little bigger than mine." Professional spiel over, the confidence inspired by the familiar topic seemed to leach away. "...I lost track. I can clean up… you'll stay, right?" he added, still watching Hakuba, who gave him an unimpressed look.

"You seem to have already forgotten that you're in my custody, Kuroba-san."

"Oh. Right. ...I have to remember you're real."

"You're _wearing my coat_ , which I would eventually like returned, thank you. After it's been dry cleaned," he added with a raised hand when Kurou began reluctantly removing it. "Which I suspect may not be possible for some time."

"I'm—"

Kaito deliberately steamrollered the apology by saying, "Jii-chan should know one. He knows everyone," which arrested both Hakuba and Kurou's attention.

"Who is this?" Hakuba said, while Kurou's brow furrowed uncertainly.

"Jii Konosuke, the old magician's assistant to Kuroba Touichi," Kaito explained.

Kurou's face cleared. "The old man who helps when you wear the white Kid suit."

Kaito nodded. "Also, at least where I know him, owner of a pool bar, a car, and a little black book full of people, usually who owe him a favor or two."

"Wait," Hakuba ordered, eyes narrowed, "You mean Jii-san of the _Blue Parrot_?"

Saguru chuckled. "You enjoy billiards too, then?"

_Wait, what?_

Oblivious to Kaito's surprise, Hakuba answered, "Yes, and I like the atmosphere there."

"That might simplify matters of introduction, then, but we should be certain you're not easily recognizable to approach him." Saguru shooed a hand at them. "Kuroba-san, clean up and take a nondescript appearance. Hakuba-san, we'll be in the front room to let you change." Kurou hesitated, seeming unsure whether he wanted to accept orders from a younger doppelganger, then nodded and reluctantly uncurled from the futon.

Kaito let Saguru herd him to the front room, then demanded, "You go to the _Parrot?"_

Donning a hat swiped from Kurou's closet, Saguru chuckled wryly. "On occasion, though I hadn't realized you knew him as well. The game is relaxing, and people often gossip at such places. I sometimes wonder if Jii-san doesn't encourage it." Saguru's expression sobered. "You're certain he'll be able to help?"

"As sure as I can get," Kaito admitted, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "If I thought he could be a physical match for... this guy, as well as someone he would have listened to, we might have avoided all the rest of this stuff."

"But you don't, and we didn't, and I don't think you actually regret it. Let's stick to what we _are_ dealing with."

"Easy for you to say." Kaito refocused on the sensation of Lupin in the back of his mind. _I still want to know everything you aren't telling me._

_:My boy, that could fill entire libraries.:_

_You know what I mean—why Meraud said to wait in the storeroom, for one, and why you're so sure taking care of all of this first won't come back to bite us—hell, why you're sure the attention we're trying to avoid either doesn't know we're here or doesn't CARE._

_:Patience. One does not feed the doves and pull them out of a hat simultaneously.:_

_Your analogies could use work._ But Lupin hadn't lied... yet, at least.

"We'll start with the _Blue Parrot_ and Jii-san," Saguru said, returning Kaito to the present. "The rest we'll take as it comes."

"Right." Given who they were planning to deal with, however, Kaito made certain to snag a familiar-looking blonde wig from Kurou's closet before they left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Japanese, roku is six and kuro as it is written in Kuroba means black. The pun sadly does not translate well into English.


	15. Long, Hard Road (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 10th anniversary of Promenade, readers. To all who have stuck with me thus far, thank you for reading and for every comment, kudos, review, rec, and fanart. I have treasured them all.
> 
> Additional thanks to Wren, Ellen, and Kdm13 for listening, encouraging, commenting and inspiring this chapter to completion.

_You say I am repeating  
_ _Something I have said before. I shall say it again._  
 _Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,_  
 _To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,_  
 _You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy._  
~East Coker (III.34-38)

* * *

Reaching the _Blue Parrot_ was simple-basic disguises for the other three since Kaito had never removed his own, disabling Kurou's phone, and taking a few bags of necessities on the trains. Kurou twitched when they passed the limit of his allowed radius, but merely leaned a fraction closer to Inspector Hakuba's shoulder. Getting him off the train took more effort, but Inspector Hakuba had discovered that Kurou wouldn't resist a hand guiding his movement and put it to good use. Jii failing to answer his door at first was a worrying moment, but a second round of knocking finally prompted the door to crack open just enough for him to regard them suspiciously.

_Yeah, four unfamiliar people in hats and at least one pair of shades crowded on your doorstep would do that._

"May I help you gentlemen?"

Inspector Hakuba removed his sunglasses and raised his hat just far enough to reveal a hint of blond hair. "If you have time, I need a discreet conversation with a good man."

Jii blinked several times. "...And you can vouch for your companions?"

Hakuba paused a fraction longer than Kaito would have liked, then nodded. "Please. Time is of the essence."

Jii seemed to find that acceptable, because he unchained the door bolt and ushered them to a small kotatsu. "What can I do for the dead, Inspector?"

With a wry smile, Hakuba answered, "Your choice of words is rather appropriate."

"Oh?" Jii regarded them all with banked curiosity. After a moment, Kurou subtly steeled himself and removed the bulk of his own disguise.

"I think I used to call you 'Jii-chan'."

Kaito raised his eyebrows; Kurou must have spent the train ride hunting down old memories of that time, given his earlier lack of recognition. Either that, or he was cheating off of dreaming Kaito's life.

Jii sucked in a breath, eyes wide and locked on Kurou's face. "It can't be; is it really you? Oh, Master Touichi, if only you could see…"

Kaito hid a wince, resisting the urge to hunch in his seat as Kurou kept a perfectly composed face and replied, "I should have died the night I disappeared. I didn't. But we have bigger problems." He glanced over at Hakuba, a hint of uncertainty creeping in.

Hakuba took over, continuing, "Officially, my supposed assassin at the heist last n—month had a moment of arrogance and didn't notice the vest under my clothes. I'm playing dead until I can catch a high enough player to break them open, with Kuroba-san's assistance. Unofficially..."

Kurou offered a sickly smile. "I forgot who I was supposed to be, until something shoved it through my brain with a buzzsaw."

"Something?"

"It's a bit too complicated for now; our concerns are time-sensitive." Hakuba quickly summarized the situation, though he glossed the identities of Kaito and Saguru, which was just as well. While Kaito had a bad track record on that front, the fewer people that knew about alternate universes, the better. Jii listened quietly to Hakuba's stilted explanations without interrupting, though he didn't look away from Kurou the entire time. Kaito started zoning them out as he tried to plot out their next steps, though he was still tired enough that he kept losing the thread of his own thoughts. A nudge to his arm from Saguru brought his attention back to the actual conversation as it started winding down.

Jii did know a discreet doctor who, for an extra fee, could be immediately available. He also wouldn't hear of them trying to cover the cost, which was a relief even though Hakuba protested on principle. After he'd placed the call for that, when told that Kurou would be pursued by the woman who stole him away and placed the tracker in the first place, Jii's eyes practically gleamed in cold, anticipatory fury. "She cannot enter here without our knowledge."

"Security cameras?" Inspector Hakuba asked with a curious glance around the apartment.

Jii nodded. "At the top of the external entrance stairs, outside the _Blue Parrot_ 's entrances, and in the stairwell leading from the _Parrot_ to this apartment." He nodded at the door that must lead to the back entrance to the billiard hall. "Of course, electronics can be subverted. Among other safeguards, the back stairwell has tuned Nightingale steps." His sharp smile reminded exactly why he was such an excellent partner for Kid, and why the _Parrot_ was a place for planning Kid heists besides the flippable billiard tables.

"Good," Hakuba replied. "Is there a place out of the way where Kuroba-san can recover once the tracker is out?"

"My bedroom is small, but will suffice. Now, if this—woman—is coming, we had best prepare."

* * *

An hour later, Jii and Inspector Hakuba had hashed out rotations for guarding the entrances, Kurou had eaten again at their mutual behest, and the doctor had arrived. Kaito let Inspector Hakuba keep a suspicious eye on the doctor, though Kurou himself was downright _eager_ to get started once he'd apparently satisfied for himself that the man wasn't a threat. How many years Kurou must have been looking for anyone who could remove the thing without risk of permanent damage to his muscles or betrayal… Kaito shuddered and moved on.

Instead he focused on the front door and camera feed from his position at the apartment entrance. He also ignored the muted sounds of Jii and Hakuba assisting the doctor within the closed bedroom and listened for any sign of Vermouth, or of Saguru downstairs in the _Blue Parrot._

Saguru would be fine downstairs, really. He'd too much practice playing waiting games for Vermouth to catch him off guard, and the doors had deadbolts just like the apartment. If she came up the apartment stairs, though, since Kaito had practice with how electronic surveillance could be fooled… his hands strayed to the card case at his belt. A monster would elicit far too many questions from Jii—and Vermouth herself—and Saguru would creatively maim Kaito if he tried another Shadow Game with the Capture Jar trap. However, Bakura and Yugi had been sure to add a lot of other cards, some with particularly nasty smiles.

Still keeping an eye on his watchpost, Kaito retrieved his Deck and skimmed through the traps. There had been one that hadn't worked for the other situations they'd been in, but it might work here if he could only find it…

_Battle Break. When an opponent's monster declares an attack: Your opponent can reveal one monster in their hand to negate this card's effect, otherwise destroy the attacking monster, then end the Battle Phase._

Vermouth was unquestionably her own monster. If breaching the building counted as declaring an attack, all he needed was to be sure that 'destroy' didn't mean dead or insane. She wouldn't know how to counter the trap before the effects kicked in, and against Vermouth, secret rules and consequences were more than fair.

Replacing the superfluous cards, Kaito pressed _Battle Break_ against the front door. Tempting as it was to ward the entire apartment and billiard hall, he'd likely collapse unconscious after and Saguru might punch another wall. If not Kaito. As it was, trapping the front door left him lightheaded. Maybe five hours sleep and one meal wasn't enough to recover from improbable time travel shenanigans after all.

Kaito managed to stay upright and alert until the doctor was escorted out the discreet fire exit at the back of the _Parrot_ , then relinquished his watch position to Jii half an hour early when Jii got a good look at him. Luckily Jii attributed the sudden paleness of Kaito's face to stress and shooed him to the small kotatsu beside the kitchenette space for a snack and then a nap. Without anything better to do than wait, Kaito obligingly wolfed his shopping-trip leftovers and curled up on the cushions. The late spring warmth made the blanket superfluous, but now was as good a time as any to test if the nightmares were stopped as abruptly and mysteriously as they had begun.

_Gonna… summon Méraud and Lupin after this… 'n see if they'll hedge to my face._

* * *

A silent burst of shadows roused Kaito from a dream involving a bear in a tutu, an army of samurai cats, and Kamen Yaiba; he surged to his feet in time to hear the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

A body that could only be Vermouth lay in a crumpled heap on the threshold, Jii training a hunting rifle at her already while calling for Hakuba's assistance. The inspector pounded up the stairs, joined a few seconds later by Saguru exiting Jii's bedroom, before Kaito got his legs in working order. He managed a few swaying steps closer, then saw her face peeking through mussed blond curls.

Kaito's knees locked, treacherous memory flashing mocking laughter and restraints and _oven mitts_ —

He couldn't breathe.

His scalp prickled with unfamiliar cold and wet, his lungs were on fire, his vision was graying around the edges but she was still there filling it inside and out—

"Hey!" Saguru barked in his face from nowhere, gloved fingers tight on Kaito's shoulder and shaking it slightly. He was a much better blond to look at even if Kaito's hands couldn't stop clenching against the ghost-feeling of claustrophobic restraint and his ears are rang like the first time he got shot at.

Kaito covered Saguru's hand with both of his and held onto the real feeling against his skin, gaze dropping to Saguru's chest to track the rise and fall of his breathing before Saguru started counting it anyway. How many times had he done that by now? The answer remained elusive, but 'too many' would do.

_Too many hurts, so little time… too many Vermouths._

And Saguru hadn't used his name while Vermouth was in earshot, lucid or no, which was a small mercy. When he could breathe again, Kaito squeezed at Saguru's wrist and offered a careful smile. "Thanks. Um. Not getting any closer to her."

"A wise decision," Saguru murmured, brows still furrowed with concern. Kaito let him walk along back to the kotatsu, where Kaito sank to the ground and pulled the blanket and pillows around like when he'd still been small enough to make a proper kotatsu fortress. Saguru crouched beside the pillows at such an angle it could almost seem accidental that he was blocking most of the entryway from sight, if Kaito didn't know him better. "You can stay here with Jii-san and the patient, and I'll go with Inspector Hakuba."

Kaito almost protested, but going along to Kudou's would require being in even closer proximity and it wasn't like he could do anything Saguru couldn't to prove their story. Portals weren't exactly safe to touch and he was too tired to manage one anyway without an elixir better saved for emergencies. Like past events he was _not thinking about right now nope nope nope_.

Focus on the rest of the day. "I can also pretend to be her leaving, so cameras catch her going from here to the train station. I brought the wig for it anyway, just in case."

Saguru nodded thoughtfully, then glanced back at the others and pursed his lips. "And later, you'll tell me exactly what you _did_."

"That? That's easy." Kaito retrieved the top card of his Deck and handed it over, then had the hindsight to duck his head. "I couldn't tell you ahead of time without compromising our being on watch, and it just made me tired." In Saguru's silence, he added quickly, "And I stopped before I was keeled over even though I wanted to trap the whole building instead of just the front door."

Saguru dragged out his frosty disapproval a few more moments, then sighed in resignation and returned the card. "I suppose that's progress."

Kaito tried to not force his smile. "Paradigm shifts don't happen in a week, I'm told."

"Mmm. You'll be all right here? I think the Inspector will be willing to leave you and Jii-san as temporary custody holders, but…"

"You have to go with him—bad enough it'll just be two of you making sure she gets to proper custody. I'll manage, promise."

Saguru failed to look convinced, but he sighed again and nodded. "Don't push yourself; don't do anything stupid; don't let _him_ do anything stupid."

"You're clucking again." Kaito conveniently ignored that Saguru's concern was possibly justified based on the past five minutes. "Go on, you're going to need a facemask and a headscarf at least to smuggle her out of here properly. Jii-san should have both."

Saguru squeezed Kaito's shoulder one last time, then left to assist. Kaito dared a glance toward them before clapping his hands over his ears at the sound of her voice, no longer muddled by the earlier hushed conversation. Music, music, something else to listen to, _anything_ else—he hummed snatches of a dozen popular tunes under his breath in quick succession, drowning out the awful smooth confidence even outnumbered and outgunned.

Thankfully, it was only a few more minutes of staring resolutely into the kitchenette area before Jii came into view and indicated that the others had gone.

"Are you hungry, young man? You missed the last meal while you slept."

Hearing anything but 'young master' from Jii was disconcerting for a moment, but Kaito did have his partial disguise and they were going by Steven and Sora for the moment. (Mostly for the mental image of Riku's face if he ever found out; still excellent.) Kaito's stomach replied for him, however, with a loud rumble.

"Eheh…" Kaito rubbed the back of his neck. "If it's not too much trouble?"

"Certainly. I was going to make something light for the young master as well. He's far too thin…" The last was muttered to himself rather than to Kaito, and he shook his head after. "Wait a little longer, if you would."

True to Jii's word, Kaito soon had a steaming bowl of tofu and noodle miso soup (and presumably Kurou had just the broth in a little thermos Jii took into the bedroom, but Kaito wasn't going in to check on him yet). Jii settled across the kotatsu with his own bowl, and Kaito took several fortifying gulps before asking, "What happened to Vermouth?"

Jii eyed Kaito with some consideration before replying, "She was unconscious briefly, and when she woke appeared no longer able to lift her gun, even to surrender it. She has similar paresis in her legs, if her movements are as genuine as I believe."

"Oh." Not that it wasn't the least of what she deserved; the Shadows on their own could be more clever than Kaito hoped. "If it's okay to leave you alone with him like this I should pretend to be her leaving soon, so it's not suspicious…"

"Finish your soup first, lad," Jii said kindly.

Making an effort toward that was easy. "Will you be okay alone with him, though?" Kaito repeated. _His_ Jii was great even with danger, but even with Nightengale steps this Jii had been only a billiard hall owner for over a decade, at least in theory, and Kurou…

Jii smiled, half-hidden behind his mustache but visible in his eyes. "I've no doubt the young master could kill me six different ways with only his soup thermos, but I don't believe he will."

"...Okay." Impersonating Vermouth and coming straight back for more sleep sounded perfect. Méraud and Lupin weren't going anywhere and arguing logic, reasoning, or motive with Lupin was not for the low-on-sleep.

And if Hakuba and Saguru could be successful, maybe they could leave this universe behind with some hope for a better future and actually get _home._

 


End file.
